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englishchinesetranslations · 1 year

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Hello, Endeavour here. I first remember hearing the phrase “woke capital” being used on the internet by the dissident right in late 2018. The great (once banned, now unbanned) Twitter account under that handle was created in May of 2018. I don’t know if it was this user who coined the phrase, but it has become one of the most potent weapons in the dissident right’s memetic arsenal.

The “woke” as they have become known, present themselves as the defenders of the oppressed and downtrodden racial and sexual victim groups of society against the alleged, straight, white, and male power structure, championing causes like racial egalitarianism, feminism, and LGBT rights. This façade of victimhood and rebellion quickly fades away when exposed to the fact that billions upon billions of dollars are put into pushing these causes by the likes of BlackRock and Goldman Sachs each year and that the entire international media is dedicated to upholding the narratives they are founded upon.

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When viewed in this light, “wokeism” appears, not as a righteous crusade for social justice, but as top-down, social engineering being forced upon Western society by the elite class, which is exactly what it is. There is no better indication of this reality than the now annual tradition of corporations replacing their logos with LGBT rainbow themed versions on social media in the month of June each year.

I first considered making a video on the phenomenon of woke capital in June 2019 to coincide with that year’s over-the-top and ridiculous offerings corporations devote to LGBT Pride Month, but I never got around to it for some reason. I finally decided the time was right when this phenomenon of woke capital reached its zenith (at least so far) in the summer of 2020, after the death of the drug addict and convicted felon, now elevated to progressive sainthood, George Floyd.

I published what is to date my most popular video by far titled ‘The Base and Superstructure of Woke Capitalism’ on July 9th, 2020 after a month of the BLM riots raging across the United States, spilling over into the rest of the Western world. The most shocking thing about those few months in 2020 was not the widespread lawlessness, but the degree to which all institutions in the Western world not only enabled but encouraged it.

The United States experienced the most flagrant violations of rule of law ever seen in a Western country during the summer of Floyd. Rioters destroyed property and assaulted ordinary citizens while law enforcement either stood by doing nothing or in some cases, arrested victims for defending themselves. It was the truest and most extreme form of anarcho-tyranny I’ve ever seen.

What’s more is that every single major corporation responded to this calamity by donating millions or in some cases billions of dollars towards BLM and the so-called cause of “anti-racism”. This is the context in which I made what would become my most viewed video. In it, I tried to explain, why is it that corporations so relentlessly support woke politics. The conclusion that I came to in that video was that they wanted to create a soulless, deracinated, global consumer class whose entire being would be devoted to consumption. The assumption I was operating under was that the goal of corporations is to make money. Therefore, they must be pushing wokeism as a means of increasing their potential to make money.

Looking back three years later, I no longer think this is the case. Instead, I think there’s something else behind the phenomenon of woke capital which is even darker. To give even more context for why I though this at the time, but no longer do, I need to address the even bigger international news story which preceded the summer of Floyd and long outlasted it; COVID. By that point, the COVID era had begun a few months prior, but we really didn’t get a full understanding of the true implications of COVID until a year later during the unprecedented madness surrounding the vaccine.

I’m not going to rehash the whole two years of COVID. For the purposes of this essay, I will say that COVID and the other rabbit holes which it led me down brought me to the conclusion that profit is not the main driving force behind woke capital as I theorized in my video on the subject in 2020.

First of all, the one thing which COVID showed us was that the elites don’t actually care about the economy at all. They were all too enthusiastic to devastate the economy even after it was clear to all that the COVID restrictions were doing far more harm than good. Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that for many, there was a huge financial incentive for advancing the COVID tyranny, namely among the pharmaceutical companies and corporations which thrive off the further atomization of society such as big tech, online shopping, etc.

However, COVID was in effect a wealth transfer as it made the vast majority of people a lot poorer and resulted in the ongoing cost-of-living crisis. It didn’t grow the economy, but rather it transferred huge sums of money from the bottom and the middle to the top. Most people have a lot of less an ability to spend on consumer products than they did back in 2019. So, furthering consumerism was not the goal of everything that was done from 2020 to 2022. What really was achieved during that period is in line with what I now consider to be the real driving force behind woke capital.

Moving on from COVID, the past three years have made me a lot more conscious of the climate change and sustainable development agenda. The phrases “The Great Reset” and “Build Back Better” were first heard in 2020 during COVID. They fell out of use a year or two later when they were no longer useful to the regime’s messaging, but what they were essentially referring to is Agenda 2030 or the UN Sustainable Development Goals for which wokeism is baked into the cake along with the environmental policies.Another force I only became conscious of in the past few years which is intertwined with all this is the Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance rating system or ESG. This is essentially a social credit system which rates corporations to determine which are worthy of investment or not. The social criteria for ESG are essentially how woke a corporation is. The more woke they are, the higher their rating. The environmental criteria are mostly related to the climate agenda and how devoted they are to achieving the lauded goal of net-zero carbon emissions.

ESG has existed since 2006, but it became a lot more prominent when BlackRock announced in 2020 that ESG would be taken into consideration for all of their future investments. There is a large overlap between ESG and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and an effort is being made to bring the two fully inline. So, there is a clear link between the driving forces behind the climate agenda and the woke agenda. And this is reflected by the establishment stooges who promote both of these. Take Justin Trudeau for example. As often as he is sure to denounce Canada’s history of racism, sexism, and homophobia, he is just as sure to proclaim his government’s devotion to fighting climate change.

I’ve been acutely aware of anti-white policies such as mass immigration, affirmative action, etc. for almost a decade now, but I largely ignored the environmental policies being advocated by the same individuals and institutions, seeing them as a lot less relevant to the very real threats the aforementioned policies posed. It’s only within the last two or three years that I’ve started to consider the latter of equal importance and the two as inseparable.

As I now see the two agendas as inextricably linked, I’ve come to the conclusion that profit and consumerism are most certainly not the motivation behind woke capital. If there is one thing the climate agenda is definitely not designed to do, it is to facilitate consumerism. On the contrary, it appears that the purpose is to put an end to the consumer society neoliberal capitalism has created. The policies being proposed will kneecap massive industries such as the agricultural industry, the tourism industry, the automotive industry, and more.

And then there’s the ludicrous and dystopian prospect of the introduction of a carbon credit score (which I made a recent video about). Such a system would severely limit the average person’s ability to consume and reduce their incentive to produce given that it could also act as a kind of UBI. This would all be a radical departure from the neoliberal capitalism of the past few decades. So, where does wokeism fit into all of this if the two are so deeply connected? And if profit isn’t the goal, then what really is?

It is now my opinion that the phenomenon of woke capital and its symbiotic relationship with the sustainable development agenda are primarily motivated by control. Ultimately, wokeism is creating a more dysfunctional society. It is facilitating the importation of a class of people accustomed to a lower standard of living into Western countries via mass immigration, deracinating and atomizing the population through multiculturalism, destroying the family unit through feminism and the LGBT agenda, and reducing competency via affirmative action.

In short, it is creating a new people who won’t be able to do anything about the drastic fall in quality of life in the West or the tyrannical system of control the elites have in mind. The easiest person to control is someone with no agency of their own. Someone who is sick, incompetent, lazy, and without an ounce of will. Not only would such a person not resist the system, they would defend it to the end as it is their sole source of both status and sustenance. That is the kind of person being created by woke capital.

If nothing else, the last three years have taught me that elites are not primarily motivated by money, but by power. By definition, someone in the elite is wealthy. They already can afford any material goods they would ever want. When you become that wealthy, what becomes a lot more valuable to you is not further profit but expanding your own power and influence. And that does a lot to explain the phenomenon of wokeism throughout every elite Western institution.

I do not subscribe to the theory of “Go woke, go broke.” Every Fortune 500 company has gone woke at this point and none of them have gone broke as a result. However, going woke certainly doesn’t make these companies more profitable. They do lose money as a result (though never enough to go broke), but they gain power by furthering the broader degradation of a healthy society which they are more than happy to spend the extra money on.

This is perfectly exemplified by ESG. This year, there has been a backlash against ESG in the corporate world for the simple fact that ESG is not profitable. One reason for this is that it rewards companies for hiring people based on their identity (not being White, straight, or male) rather than their actual merit. Another is that it forces companies to reduce their net carbon output which means spending extra money on buying carbon credits from smaller companies.

While it is presented a guide to ethical investing, the real function of ESG is that it funnels investment to a small number of large corporations who have the excess capital to spend on being ESG sufficient and denies funding to smaller firms who simply cannot afford to be so wasteful. This doesn’t necessarily make larger corporation more profitable, but a lot more powerful by crushing opposition.

Now, in my original video and so far in this essay, I’ve framed woke capital as a purely Machiavellian force for attaining more power. I’ve thus far failed to address another major driving force behind Woke Capital. That is genuine belief among the elite in the causes which they profess to support. While I don’t think this is the case for every billionaire out there, there are a sizeable number who genuinely believe that wokeism is making the world a better place. The cause for them is not simply about power, but also about achieving some kind of ideological ends. And they are in many cases willing to put their deeply held principles above both profitability and practicality.

A prominent example of this is ethnic identity among elites of Jewish ancestry. The role which Jews have played in the movements which would later come to be known as “woke” throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century has been well documented on the dissident right. Jewish support for mass non-white immigration into Western countries, multiculturalism, feminism, the LGBT movement, etc. has often been motivated by a desire to dismantle White rule of Western countries which they see as in conflict with Jewish interests.

Among White gentile elites, support for woke causes is often motivated by a universalist, egalitarian worldview. For them, Wokeism is a moral crusade against the ultimate evils of racism, sexism, and homophobia. I suppose you could add climate change to that list as well. While this worldview was primarily developed by Jewish intellectuals during the 20th century with their own ethnic interests in mind, it has been hegemonic throughout cultural and intellectual life in the West for decades now.

The entire current ruling class of elites in the West has been raised and educated in it. As a result, many White elites have internalized this worldview (minus the Jewish particularism) and genuinely believe it is a noble cause. Lastly, there is the newer, but rising phenomenon of non-White elites in the West, primarily from South and South-East Asia. Much like with Jews, woke politics often serve their own ethnic interests too, though in a much more upfront and less deceptive manner.

Whether deeply held principles or a Machiavellian pursuit of power is the main driving force behind woke capital is up for debate. Personally, I think the two feed off each other. One can start from a point of sincerely held beliefs and justify their actions through ruthless Machiavellianism or they can start off as a power-hungry opportunist who eventually begins to believe their own lies. But either way, I do not think that their goal is the furtherance of the consumer society which we’ve become accustomed to over the past several decades.

Instead, the current trends suggest that their goal is to replace it with something else. I’d even dispute the title of my original video which I called “woke capitalism”. Now, the word “capitalism” has lost all meaning over the past century. It’s gotten to the point where self-proclaimed anarchists are the foot soldiers of BlackRock while claiming to be fighting capitalism. However, if we take it to mean neoliberal consumerism, wokeism is certainly not designed to maintain that.

As we can see in East Asia, neoliberal consumerism can still exist within a homogenous society without importing the third world or demonizing the dominant ethnic group. While nihilism and materialism are prerequisites, the full-scale cultural of wokeism iconoclasm isn’t. When you zoom out and look at the broader narratives behind wokeism in combination with the climate agenda on a global scale, it appears that the goal is to impoverish the West in order to bring down to the level of the rest of the world.

Present-Day San Francisco

The cash cow of neoliberal capitalism might end, but those at the top are already so wealthy that they aren’t motivated by further profit, but by the potential for absolute and permanent control on a global scale. If what they are planning actually works, that is. But that’s a topic for another day.

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askagamedev · 2 years

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Hi! I've noticed quite a few MMO's sometimes have a class that is locked to a certain gender or race for the character. What are the reasons behind this? As a player it often feels disappointing to not be able to play a class the way that I wanted, and I doubt that any developer does it because "Only men can do X" or "Only women can do Y", but I have a hard time understanding what kind of benefit these limits would bring to the game? Thank you for your time!

Such restrictions typically exist for the purpose of world building. When we’re creating a game, we’re trying to build engaging game systems - yes - but we are also creating believable worlds with their own nations, cultures, races, and even species that the players can believe in. It is important for this belief that these socio-political creations behave in ways that would make sense as if they were real, and that often includes constraints like gender, race/species, nation of origin, social class, and so on. A huge factor in how nations and cultures evolve is due to their local constraints - geography, resource availability, technology, and so on. Let’s look at an example of how this might apply.

Imagine a fantasy nation of sentient human-sized insectoids that established itself in our created game world. Such a nation might have developed their own form of martial arts over time that utilizes a four-armed fighting style and warriors from this race would be able to utilize up to four weapons simultaneously. They may have developed their own specialized weapons technology that requires three or even four simultaneous arm/hand motions to operate. They may have developed tail or wing weapons or technology. A humanoid with two arms couldn’t use this fighting style or these special weapons because they lack the hardware for it - they’re limited to two arms, two legs, and no tail or wings by nature of being a humanoid. In a game where we allowed players to control insectoid characters, it would likely cause significant narrative dissonance if non-insect characters could learn the insect fighting style or use the insect-specific weapons without any kind of in-game acknowledgement that it was out of the ordinary.

We might extrapolate this example nation further. Insects in nature often exhibit sexual dimorphism (different physical characteristics between males and females of the same species), so it wouldn’t be out of place to have the females of the species be much larger and stronger than their male counterparts. In an organized society of such creatures, this might make the females the de-facto warriors within the society due to their innate physical differences. In such a situation, allowing for male warriors without any kind of in-game acknowledgement about how unusual it is would similarly bend or break the believability.

This isn’t to say that such constraints are set in stone by any stretch. All rules have exceptions. Our insect nation might have (rarer) male warriors serve in a majority-female military. We might have an unusually dexterous savant human who manages to wield four weapons at once, perhaps through telekinetic powers. The difficult part comes from acknowledging those exceptions. When a situation in a society is extraordinary, it is expected for those observing to acknowledge the extraordinary-ness of the situation. The acknowledgement of those differences makes the world feel believable. Visible lack of acknowledgement will make the world much harder to believe in.

That is the difficulty - acknowledgement of lore in game costs dev resources to show. A conversation with an insect military leader would likely have different responses to a male insect warrior, a female insect warrior, or a human outsider. If the developers lack the resources to acknowledge those major societal outliers within the game, chances are good they won’t allow those outliers. Without notable (acknowledged) cultural and mechanical differences between societies/groups/nations/etc., they end up feeling very similar. In that situation, it reduces the player’s choice to one that is primarily cosmetic. That can be fine if that is one of the goal visions of the game, but we cannot assume that. There’s a tradeoff being made here. It is up to the game director to make that particular call.

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butsobeautiful · 4 years

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You could be the king, but watch the queen conquer.

Genre: drabble, alternate history.

Inspired by Daechwita music video and influenced by wine inspired research on Empress Myeongseong

Pairing: min yoongi/reader; min yoongi/unnamed female protagonist

1.6k words

The king was dead. Despite one’s personal opinion of the king, the people of the Joseon dynasty, regardless of class, were shocked. At his own wedding, the king had been murdered. A man entered the temple, parading as a servant, and stabbed him before the king could make his appearance.

The Usurper, the people called him in hushed voices. The bride-to-be looked at him with stoic gratitude. It was no secret the current king still had the mentality of a naïve prince. The woman had no qualms with the duties being a queen and a wife entailed; rather, the husband was the main problem. She had no interest in the king. He had been ruling for six moons, and his reign promised little to his people and his legacy. With Japan looming in the distance, the entire nation watched their king with trepidation.

And then, they watched his funeral rights. The Usurper came from the Yeoheung Min clan, a respectable aristocratic house. The Min bastard surprised everyone. Min Yoongi murdered the king on the day of his wedding.

He did it to prove he is worthy, some gossiped. Others claimed it was an old rivalry between himself and the king. Only Yoongi knew the truth, and he did not deign to share his reasoning with anyone in the court.

The dead king’s bride-to-be did not fear for her life. Once her eyes met the Usurper’s, instead of the king’s, her mind began to plan. While perhaps not renowned for her beauty—though she was by no means unattractive—the bride’s near infamy stemmed from her intellect and wit. Her father had no sons, but that did not deter her from learning the responsibilities of a man. When she saw the blood-stained blade held steady in Yoongi’s practiced hand, she neither screamed nor cried.

“Release your blade, my king,” she announced, while bowing to the floor. “It would be a discredit if you did not seize the opportunity at hand. The bride of your enemy is a spoil of war for your taking.” The words were biting, and made the Usurper—Yoongi—halt in his tracks.

His eyes widened, the scar over his right eye threatening to inhibit his expression. The woman before him was bowing with her head upon the ground in her wedding outfit. This, to say the least, had not been a part of Yoongi’s personal mission whatsoever. The absurdity of the situation, combined with the flustering adrenaline of assassination, caused him to laugh out loud.

The woman tensed, but said nothing. “Why would I want the wife of my enemy?”

At that, her head shot up. “My hand was promised, but the ceremony was incomplete. The marriage has not happened and will not happen, let alone be consummated.” Yoongi was mildly perturbed at her icy words and her lapse of proper behavior. However, he recognized her, and knew her reputation. He had only seen her in passing before, as noble families often mingle. She, however, was instructed to stay away from the bastard. She, however, would at least recognize his presence with direct eye contact and a slight nod of her head.

She knew him, of course. Thus, while her behavior was scandalous for their society, her status and intelligence granted her some level of immunity.

“I did not realize the wedding was... interrupted.” Yoongi lowered his sword. The guards in that room removed their hand from their weapon and relaxed at a pointed look from the former bride. She stood and faced Yoongi head on. The intensity of her person made it seem like she was staring you down eye-to-eye, regardless of any height differences.

“The fact remains. So, my king Min Yoongi, what shall you do with me?” She asked, her stomach flipping. While her face remained a placid calm, her nerves were screaming at her to run, her heart beating faster than it had ever. He pressed his lips together, looking her up and down. “You are a fine woman, and the power of your mind is no secret. I am sure you will figure something out. You are excused from my presence.”

Yoongi had little interest whatsoever in dealing with any of the old king’s business. He was starting afresh, he would change the nation for its people’s protection and prosperity.

“My king.” She bowed again, her eyes returning to his with reflecting levels of intensity as his. His mind saw her at the banquets, her eyes meeting his and refusing to break away. The other men and women would make eye contact and quickly turn to their friends and whisper or gossip, as if he were blind. “Allow me to impart my advice.” Yoongi’s face scrunched up, he wanted anything but advice. She narrowed her eyes and pushed onward.

“The kingdom will be in chaos if you are not prepared to manage the current system we have. Whether you keep to the status quo or completely overthrow our current form of governance is up to you. However, as it stands, you need loyal advisors. For every person who despised the king, there is someone who is loyal. Their loyalty may solely be based upon wages, but they will all resist you—at first. Furthermore, you need an heir as soon as physically possible. This will secure your throne claim and legacy.”

“Why are you helping me? Why have you never treated me for what I am? You never treated me like a bastard and now you refuse to treat me as the murderer of your husband-to-be and king.” Yoongi’s defenses were elevated to extremes.

A smile ghosted upon her face. “You’re like me. Everyone underestimates your abilities. You are a bastard. I am a woman. You are stronger than the majority of men with proud and strong bloodlines. I am smarter than those same men.” She shrugged, softly. Yoongi suddenly returned her slight smile. “It would be dishonorable to treat you as the spoils of war, my lady. Should you so choose, my reign needs a queen, and I could ask of no better woman than the one before me.”

It had been ages since the woman allowed surprise to affect her. Now, her mouth softly dropped open. She fully expected that the Usurper would take her and make her his wife. However, Yoongi’s appearance allowed her to hope. Whatever fears she had were no reflection of his character. Simply put, she was a woman, and promised property to the newly deceased king. Further shocking her, Yoongi bowed deeply at her feet.

Moved, she knelt and lifted his face to meet her sight. “I accept.”

“It could bring shame upon your family, upon yourself.”

She scoffed. “You’re the King now. They wouldn’t dare. And you should be well aware that their opinion can rot for all I care.”

Yoongi’s eyes softened at the woman before him as she set her jaw and her eyes burned with a deep conviction he had only been able to catch glimpses of in the past. Now she directed it at him.

She drank in his face as closely as he did to her. In this moment, the bastard felt like an equal more than claiming the title of king made him feel. His eyes, one marred by an old wound, tried to convey that strong feeling as words failed. He had his father’s facial structure; the signature sharp eyes and soft nose of the Min family. At this moment, his family name was just a word—it held none of its authority. His only reason to hold onto it now was to allow her to take it, too. To share it with him and change its legacy.

Despite his strength of body and will, his lips exercised the utmost gentleness when he kissed her. His lithe fingers cupped her face the second she kissed back. His expression when she sighed softly and pulled away was the look of an annoyed old man. This unabashedly honest reaction made her chuckle softly as she stroked his cheekbone.

While not in love, the two were attracted to each other. Without needing to state it, the two knew their union made the best political sense, and it was truly fortunate that their compatibility was based upon—and had always been based upon—respect. Though Yoongi, the bastard son of the Min clan’s patriarch had unfavorable fortune, his new bride never acknowledged his origins. His father had given him the Min name, and a Min he was. To her, it was as simple as that.

The consummation of their marriage was a tender affair. Both parties relished in being able to speak their minds without supervision. Having stayed up all night baring mind and soul, the baring of their bodies finally happened as the sun began to rise on their new kingdom. Yoongi had never felt such wonder at the simple intimacy of lacing his fingers through the soft hand of his wife.

He knew that, with her by his side, they could lift the kingdom to prosperity, and rectify the failures and lack of compassion exhibited by the previous kings and queens. From the moment he laid eyes on her, and from the moment she did not avert her gaze, he knew that fate favored them.

“My Queen?” He asked. The court sat in scandalized silence as their king deferred to his wife.

“The diplomatic relations with Japan are tense. We should confer with the Chinese and the Russians to address the threats of the Japanese empire. Send a member of the Kim clan to China, their queen favors the sons for potential wedding prospects of the daughters.” The queen spoke with clarity, and Yoongi nodded and stared at his court. No one seemed to leap into service. Blatantly rolling his eyes, Yoongi drawled:

“You heard your queen—what are you waiting for?”

#bts #bts fanfic #bts fanfiction #bangtan #bangtanarmynet #bts x reader #bts x y/n #only kinda tho #yoongi x reader #min yoongi #bts suga #i'm just tipsy #and i've never published anything ever #but i do be thinkin abt that daechwita video a lot... living in my mind rent free #anyway be kind this is jjst wine inspired ramblings #but i would like to maybe uhh write more one day #big 👉🏻👈🏻 hours #also if the formatting is bad im so sorry

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dathen · 4 years

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I’m so angry that tumblr put my read more WITHIN THE ASK ITSELF so I’m copying the whole post since I worked hard on it:

Ask from @ blue-electric-angel

Hi Dath! Would you feel up to rant about the trolley problem? I've never liked it but I don't know WHY or at least can't articulate it, so I would be interested in hearing another person's thoughts 🤔 But it's okay if you don't want to!!

OKAY TWO DISCLAIMERS

a) I was reminded that I should clarify my dislike of the trolley problem bc of @callmearcturus talking about its issues, so can’t take full credit here!

b) I am not a philosophy expert and find ethical thought games only useful in how they apply to the real world, and find worth in ethical discussions in how they’re applied/affect how people think more than how complex/challenging they are.

THIRD DISCLAIMER I’m very sleepy and pretty sure I have surpassed my words quota of the week so this may be a bit disjointed!!

Some background on my ire: I’m a CPA. Which means majoring in business. Which means being around business majors. Which means BUSINESS ETHICS CLASSES. My eyes start to water every time I think about how many American Dream dudebros tried to apply the trolley problem as a flimsy excuse to devalue those they thought were reasonable sacrifices for their own greater good. Is it worth testing weapons on your own population, if you can then use those weapons to end a war faster? Should we get rid of regulations about medical tests on people, if it would result in life-saving medicine being produced faster? And so on. Rules, protections, and just anything that would require giving another human being agency are treated like nuisances in the way of Great Minds moving and shaping the world as they see fit.

I went and did a search to see if anyone already put my thoughts about the trolley problem into words, and the article The Trolley Problem Will Tell you Nothing Useful About Morality sums it up right from the get-go:

It discourages us from examining the structural factors that determine our choices.

[cut for length]

One thing that drove me BATSHIT about philosophy classes is I was never allowed to bring historical or social context into any of the discussions. I couldn’t challenge Aristotle’s view of women as ranking somewhere near livestock, because if I couldn’t word puzzle my way into a truth, nonsense like “disenfranchisement of women in Ancient Greece” and “self-perpetuating social structures enforcing class and gender divides” didn’t belong in my discussions, apparently!

Which, needless to say, is a huge issue when you start getting into topics of “who should we sacrifice for the greater good” as applied to political policy. I don’t even need to elaborate on this one. It’s always those whose lives are valued less and who have less power in that society. The “greater good” is intensely subjective, and will always include the well-being of the person making the choice.

The trolley problem works from a long list of assumptions that will rarely reflect reality, and shortcut past the most important discussions to be had:

- The person behind the switch has the sole power or responsibility for making the choice. They don’t have the chance to communicate, they don’t have the chance to get input from the people in danger.

- The person behind the switch is the only one with agency, and the only one who CAN have agency.

- The safety of the person behind the switch is assumed. No possible choice could involve them being in danger.

- There’s a time limit that allows nothing more than an impulse decision.

- There’s no examination of why there is only one person with power over the situation, or why those at risk are 100% powerless to leave their situation

- There’s no chance of examining why the trolley is rolling down the tracks in the first place

That last one is where my rage comes from about the misapplication of this thought game re: insisting philosophy must be ahistorical. But the thing that especially gets under my skin is how the agency of other human beings is just completely taken off the table. A non-issue. Something we have to assume wouldn’t make a difference, something we should assume isn’t possible to begin with.

[Stop reading here if you’re avoiding The Magnus Archives spoilers to episode 101]

Since this came up in a TMA context, I’ll veer it over to TMA: I see it get brought up in the context of Gertrude sacrificing Michael to save the world. But this dehumanizes Michael as a person who could have been given agency and information, when in fact we know he was kept ignorant so that he could be more easily manipulated. It places Gertrude behind the switch with no other options other than to pull a lever one way or another. But therein lies the issue with the application of this experiment to “real life” scenarios. Where is talking to Michael instead of betraying him? Where is letting him make a choice of his own? We learn later that his sacrifice wasn’t even necessary, but with the limited information Gertrude had at the time, how much were other options (LIKE GOOD OL C4) explored before she decided to ruin the life of someone who trusted her? Why does she get to ensure her own safety behind the switch, rather than considering herself in the trade of “one life to save the world”?

TMA 155 - Cost of Living is a fantastic deconstruction of how rich and privileged people try to apply the trolley problem to excuse their choices and their abuse of others. The statement giver rationalizes murdering dozens of people to fuel her own life, excusing it with “but I can do so much good if I’m alive!” Meanwhile we’re left horrified that she clearly finds those she postures as being so helpful towards as expendable and “less valuable to society,” such as homeless people and the elderly. We’re left side-eying the idea that a rich person giving to charity while living comfortably as being an indisputable “greater good” when all that’s really happening is one person valuing her own life over the lives of so many others. The statement giver insists the net gain of the world excuses her actions, and tries to narrow the choice down to those two tracks: Don’t pull the switch and lose “all the good she could do,” pull the switch and lose just a handful of people. Listening, we know that the only person on the other track is her, and that her rationalization only enables her to kill again and again.

And that is why I hate the trolley problem.

#there are spoilers for TMA 100 in here but I mark where they start #so if you're not interested in TMA or catching up you can read the rest of me hating on the trolley problem

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theculturedmarxist · 3 years

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Published below is the introduction by World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board Chairman David North to the forthcoming book, The New York Times’ 1619 Project and the Racialist Falsification of History. It is available for pre-order at Mehring Books for delivery in late January 2021.

The volume is a comprehensive refutation of the New York Times’ 1619 Project, a racialist falsification of the history of the American Revolution and Civil War. In addition to historical essays, it includes interviews from eminent historians of the United States, including James McPherson, James Oakes, Gordon Wood, Richard Carwardine, Victoria Bynum, and Clayborne Carson.

***

I should respectfully suggest that although the oppressed may need history for identity and inspiration, they need it above all for the truth of what the world has made of them and of what they have helped make of the world. This knowledge alone can produce that sense of identity which ought to be sufficient for inspiration; and those who look to history to provide glorious moments and heroes invariably are betrayed into making catastrophic errors of political judgment.—Eugene Genovese [1]

Both ideological and historical myths are a product of immediate class interests. … These myths may be refuted by restoring historical truth—the honest presentation of actual facts and tendencies of the past.—Vadim Z. Rogovin [2]

On August 14, 2019, the New York Times unveiled the 1619 Project. Timed to coincide with the four hundredth anniversary of the arrival of the first slaves in colonial Virginia, the 100-page special edition of the New York Times Magazine consisted of a series of essays that present American history as an unyielding racial struggle, in which black Americans have waged a solitary fight to redeem democracy against white racism.

The Times mobilized vast editorial and financial resources behind the 1619 Project. With backing from the corporate-endowed Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, hundreds of thousands of copies were sent to schools. The 1619 Project fanned out to other media formats. Plans were even announced for films and television programming, backed by billionaire media personality Oprah Winfrey.

As a business venture the 1619 Project clambers on, but as an effort at historical revision it has been, to a great extent, discredited. This outcome is owed in large measure to the intervention of the World Socialist Web Site, with the support of a number of distinguished and courageous historians, which exposed the 1619 Project for what it is: a combination of shoddy journalism, careless and dishonest research, and a false, politically-motivated narrative that makes racism and racial conflict the central driving forces of American history.

In support of its claim that American history can be understood only when viewed through the prism of racial conflict, the 1619 Project sought to discredit American history’s two foundational events: The Revolution of 1775–83, and the Civil War of 1861–65. This could only be achieved by a series of distortions, omissions, half-truths, and false statements—deceptions that are catalogued and refuted in this book.

The New York Times is no stranger to scandals produced by dishonest and unprincipled journalism. Its long and checkered history includes such episodes as its endorsement of the Moscow frame-up trials of 1936–38 by its Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent, Walter Duranty, and, during World War II, its unconscionable decision to treat the murder of millions of European Jews as “a relatively unimportant story” that did not require extensive and systematic coverage. [3] More recently, the Times was implicated, through the reporting of Judith Miller and the columns of Thomas Friedman, in the peddling of government misinformation about “weapons of mass destruction” that served to legitimize the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Many other examples of flagrant violations of even the generally lax standards of journalistic ethics could be cited, especially during the past decade, as the New York Times—listed on the New York Stock Exchange with a market capitalization of $7.5 billion—acquired increasingly the character of a media empire.

The “financialization” of the Times has proceeded alongside another critical determinant of the newspaper’s selection of issues to be publicized and promoted: that is, its central role in the formulation and aggressive marketing of the policies of the Democratic Party. This process has served to obliterate the always tenuous boundary lines between objective reporting and sheer propaganda. The consequences of the Times’ financial and political evolution have found a particularly reactionary expression in the 1619 Project. Led by Ms. Nikole Hannah-Jones and New York Times Magazine editor Jake Silverstein, the 1619 Project was developed for the purpose of providing the Democratic Party with a historical narrative that legitimized its efforts to develop an electoral constituency based on the promotion of racial politics. Assisting the Democratic Party’s decades-long efforts to disassociate itself from its identification with the social welfare liberalism of the New Deal to Great Society era, the 1619 Project, by prioritizing racial conflict, marginalizes, and even eliminates, class conflict as a notable factor in history and politics.

The shift from class struggle to racial conflict did not develop within a vacuum. The New York Times, as we shall explain, is drawing upon and exploiting reactionary intellectual tendencies that have been fermenting within substantial sections of middle-class academia for several decades.

The political interests and related ideological considerations that motivated the 1619 Project determined the unprincipled and dishonest methods employed by the Times in its creation. The New York Times was well aware of the fact that it was promoting a race-based narrative of American history that could not withstand critical evaluation by leading scholars of the Revolution and Civil War. The New York Times Magazine’s editor deliberately rejected consultation with the most respected and authoritative historians.

Moreover, when one of the Times’ fact-checkers identified false statements that were utilized to support the central arguments of the 1619 Project, her findings were ignored. And as the false claims and factual errors were exposed, the Times surreptitiously edited key phrases in 1619 Project material posted online. The knowledge and expertise of historians of the stature of Gordon Wood and James McPherson were of no use to the Times. Its editors knew they would object to the central thesis of the 1619 Project, promoted by lead essayist Hannah-Jones: that the American Revolution was launched as a conspiracy to defend slavery against pending British emancipation.

Ms. Hannah-Jones had asserted:

Conveniently left out of our founding mythology is the fact that one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery. By 1776, Britain had grown deeply conflicted over its role in the barbaric institution that had reshaped the Western Hemisphere. In London, there were growing calls to abolish the slave trade … [S]ome might argue that this nation was founded not as a democracy but as a slavocracy. [4]

This claim—that the American Revolution was not a revolution at all, but a counterrevolution waged to defend slavery—is freighted with enormous implications for American and world history. The denunciation of the American Revolution legitimizes the rejection of all historical narratives that attribute any progressive content to the overthrow of British rule over the colonies and, therefore, to the wave of democratic revolutions that it inspired throughout the world. If the establishment of the United States was a counterrevolution, the founding document of this event—the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed the equality of man—merits only contempt as an exemplar of the basest hypocrisy.

How, then, can one explain the explosive global impact of the American Revolution upon the thought and politics of its immediate contemporaries and of the generations that followed?

The philosopher Diderot—among the greatest of all Enlightenment thinkers—responded ecstatically to the American Revolution:

After centuries of general oppression, may the revolution which has just occurred across the seas, by offering all the inhabitants of Europe an asylum against fanaticism and tyranny, instruct those who govern men on the legitimate use of their authority! May these brave Americans, who would rather see their wives raped, their children murdered, their dwellings destroyed, their fields ravaged, their villages burned, and rather shed their blood and die than lose the slightest portion of their freedom, prevent the enormous accumulation and unequal distribution of wealth, luxury, effeminacy, and corruption of manners, and may they provide for the maintenance of their freedom and the survival of their government! [5]

Voltaire, in February 1778, only months before his death, arranged a public meeting with Benjamin Franklin, the much-celebrated envoy of the American Revolution. The aged philosophe related in a letter that his embrace of Franklin was witnessed by twenty spectators who were moved to “tender tears.” [6]

Marx was correct when he wrote, in his 1867 preface to the first edition of Das Kapital that “the American war of independence sounded the tocsin for the European middle class,” inspiring the uprisings that were to sweep away the feudal rubbish, accumulated over centuries, of the Ancien Régime. [7]

As the historian Peter Gay noted in his celebrated study of Enlightenment culture and politics, “The liberty that the Americans had won and were guarding was not merely an exhilarating performance that delighted European spectators and gave them grounds for optimism about man; it was also proving a realistic ideal worthy of imitation.” [8]

R.R. Palmer, among the most erudite of mid-twentieth century historians, defined the American Revolution as a critical moment in the evolution of Western Civilization, the beginning of a forty-year era of democratic revolutions. Palmer wrote:

[T]he American and the French Revolutions, the two chief actual revolutions of the period, with all due allowance for the great differences between them, nevertheless shared a great deal in common, and that what they shared was shared also at the same time by various people and movements in other countries, notably in England, Ireland, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy, but also in Germany, Hungary, and Poland, and by scattered individuals in places like Spain and Russia. [9]

More recently, Jonathan Israel, the historian of Radical Enlightenment, argues that the American Revolution

formed part of a wider transatlantic revolutionary sequence, a series of revolutions in France, Italy, Holland, Switzerland, Germany, Ireland, Haiti, Poland, Spain, Greece, and Spanish America. … The endeavors of the Founding Fathers and their followings abroad prove the deep interaction of the American Revolution and its principles with the other revolutions, substantiating the Revolution’s global role less as a directly intervening force than inspirational motor, the primary model, for universal change. [10]

Marxists have never viewed either the American or French Revolutions through rose-tinted glasses. In examining world historical events, Friedrich Engels rejected simplistic pragmatic interpretations that explain and judge “everything according to the motives of the action,” which divides “men in their historical activity into noble and ignoble and then finds that as a rule the noble are defrauded and the ignoble are victorious.” Personal motives, Engels insisted, are only of a “secondary significance.” The critical questions that historians must ask are: “What driving forces in turn stand behind these motives? What are the historical causes which transform themselves into these motives in the brains of the actors?” [11]

Whatever the personal motives and individual limitations of those who led the struggle for independence, the revolution waged by the American colonies against the British Crown was rooted in objective socioeconomic processes associated with the rise of capitalism as a world system. Slavery had existed for several thousand years, but the specific form that it assumed between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries was bound up with the development and expansion of capitalism. As Marx explained:

The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of the era of capitalist accumulation. [12]

Marx and Engels insisted upon the historically progressive character of the American Revolution, an appraisal that was validated by the Civil War. Marx wrote to Lincoln in 1865 that it was in the American Revolution that “the idea of one great Democratic Republic had first sprung up, whence the first Declaration of the Rights of Man was issued, and the first impulse given to the European revolution of the eighteenth century...” [13]

Nothing in Ms. Hannah-Jones’ essay indicates that she has thought through, or is even aware of the implications, from the standpoint of world history, of the 1619 Project’s denunciation of the American Revolution. In fact, the 1619 Project was concocted without consulting the works of the preeminent historians of the Revolution and Civil War. This was not an oversight, but rather, the outcome of a deliberate decision by the New York Times to bar, to the greatest extent possible, the participation of “white” scholars in the development and writing of the essays. In an article titled “How the 1619 Project Came Together,” published on August 18, 2019, the Times informed its readers: “Almost every contributor in the magazine and special section—writers, photographers and artists—is black, a nonnegotiable aspect of the project that helps underscore its thesis...” [14]

This “nonnegotiable” and racist insistence that the 1619 Project be produced exclusively by blacks was justified with the false claim that white historians had largely ignored the subject of American slavery. And on the rare occasions when white historians acknowledged slavery’s existence, they either downplayed its significance or lied about it. Therefore, only black writers could “tell our story truthfully.” The 1619 Project’s race-based narrative would place “the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.” [15]

The 1619 Project was a falsification not only of history, but of historiography. It ignored the work of two generations of American historians, dating back to the 1950s. The authors and editors of the 1619 Project had consulted no serious scholarship on slavery, the American Revolution, the abolitionist movement, the Civil War, or Jim Crow segregation. There is no evidence that Hannah-Jones’ study of American history extended beyond the reading of a single book, written in the early 1960s, by the late black nationalist writer, Lerone Bennett, Jr. Her “reframing” of American history, to be sent out to the schools as the foundation of a new curriculum, did not even bother with a bibliography.

Hannah-Jones and Silverstein argued that they were creating “a new narrative,” to replace the supposedly “white narrative” that had existed before. In one of her countless Twitter tirades, Hannah-Jones declared that “the 1619 Project is not a history.” It is, rather, “about who gets to control the national narrative, and, therefore, the nation’s shared memory of itself.” In this remark, Hannah-Jones explicitly extols the separation of historical research from the effort to truthfully reconstruct the past. The purpose of history is declared to be nothing more than the creation of a serviceable narrative for the realization of one or another political agenda. The truth or untruth of the narrative is not a matter of concern.

Nationalist mythmaking has, for a long period, played a significant political role in promoting the interests of aggrieved middle-class strata that are striving to secure a more privileged place in the existing power structures. As Eric Hobsbawm laconically observed, “The socialists … who rarely used the word ‘nationalism’ without the prefix ‘petty-bourgeois,’ knew what they were talking about.” [16]

Despite the claims that Hannah-Jones was forging a new path for the study and understanding of American history, the 1619 Project’s insistence on a race-centered history of America, authored by African-American historians, revived the racial arguments promoted by black nationalists in the 1960s. For all the militant posturing, the underlying agenda, as subsequent events were to demonstrate, was to carve out special career niches for the benefit of a segment of the African-American middle class. In the academic world, this agenda advanced the demand that subject matter that pertained to the historical experience of the black population should be allocated exclusively to African Americans. Thus, in the ensuing fight for the distribution of privilege and status, leading historians who had made major contributions to the study of slavery were denounced for intruding, as whites, into a subject that could be understood and explained only by black historians. Peter Novick, in his book That Noble Dream, recalled the impact of black nationalist racism on the writing of American history:

Kenneth Stampp was told by militants that, as a white man, he had no right to write The Peculiar Institution. Herbert Gutman, presenting a paper to the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, was shouted down. A white colleague who was present (and had the same experience), reported that Gutman was “shattered.” Gutman pleaded to no avail that he was “extremely supportive of the black liberation movement—if people would just forget that I am white and hear what I am saying … [it] would lend support to the movement.” Among the most dramatic incidents of this sort was the treatment accorded Robert Starobin, a young leftist supporter of the Black Panthers, who delivered a paper on slavery at a Wayne State University conference in 1969, an incident which devastated Starobin at the time, and was rendered the more poignant by his suicide the following year. [17]

Despite these attacks, white historians continued to write major studies on American slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction. Rude attempts to introduce a racial qualification in judging a historian’s “right” to deal with slavery met with vigorous opposition. The historian Eugene Genovese (1930–2012), the author of such notable works as The Political Economy of Slavery and The World the Slaveholders Made, wrote:

Every historian of the United States and especially the South cannot avoid making estimates of the black experience, for without them he cannot make estimates of anything else. When, therefore, I am asked, in the fashion of our inane times, what right I, as a white man, have to write about black people, I am forced to reply in four-letter words. [18]

This passage was written more than a half century ago. Since the late 1960s, the efforts to racialize scholarly work, against which Genovese rightly polemicized, have assumed such vast proportions that they cannot be adequately described as merely “inane.” Under the influence of postmodernism and its offspring, “critical race theory,” the doors of American universities have been flung wide open for the propagation of deeply reactionary conceptions. Racial identity has replaced social class and related economic processes as the principal and essential analytic category.

“Whiteness” theory, the latest rage, is now utilized to deny historical progress, reject objective truth, and interpret all events and facets of culture through the prism of alleged racial self-interest. On this basis, the sheerest nonsense can be spouted with the guarantee that all objections grounded on facts and science will be dismissed as a manifestation of “white fragility” or some other form of hidden racism. In this degraded environment, Ibram X. Kendi can write the following absurd passage, without fear of contradiction, in his Stamped from the Beginning:

For Enlightenment intellectuals, the metaphor of light typically had a double meaning. Europeans had rediscovered learning after a thousand years in religious darkness, and their bright continental beacon of insight existed in the midst of a “dark” world not yet touched by light. Light, then, became a metaphor for Europeanness, and therefore Whiteness, a notion that Benjamin Franklin and his philosophical society eagerly embraced and imported to the colonies. … Enlightenment ideas gave legitimacy to this long-held racist “partiality,” the connection between lightness and Whiteness and reason, on the one hand, and between darkness and Blackness and ignorance, on the other. [19]

This is a ridiculous concoction that attributes to the word “Enlightenment” a racial significance that has absolutely no foundation in etymology, let alone history. The word employed by the philosopher Immanuel Kant in 1784 to describe this period of scientific advance was Aufklärung, which may be translated from the German as “clarification” or “clearing up,” connoting an intellectual awakening. The English translation of Aufklärung as Enlightenment dates from 1865, seventy-five years after the death of Benjamin Franklin, whom Kendi references in support of his racial argument. [20]

Another term used by English speaking people to describe the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been “The Age of Reason,” which was employed by Tom Paine in his scathing assault on religion and all forms of superstition. Kendi’s attempt to root Enlightenment in a white racist impulse is based on nothing but empty juggling with words. In point of fact, modern racism is connected historically and intellectually to the Anti-Enlightenment, whose most significant nineteenth century representative, Count Gobineau, wrote The Inequality of the Human Races. But actual history plays no role in the formulation of Kendi’s pseudo-intellectual fabrications. His work is stamped with ignorance.

History is not the only discipline assaulted by the race specialists. In an essay titled “Music Theory and the White Racial Frame,” Professor Philip A. Ewell of Hunter College in New York declares, “I posit that there exists a ‘white racial frame’ in music theory that is structural and institutionalized, and that only through a reframing of this white racial frame will we begin to see positive racial changes in music theory.” [21]

This degradation of music theory divests the discipline of its scientific and historically developed character. The complex principles and elements of composition, counterpoint, tonality, consonance, dissonance, timbre, rhythm, notation, etc. are derived, Ewell claims, from racial characteristics. Professor Ewell is loitering in the ideological territory of the Third Reich. There is more than a passing resemblance between his call for the liberation of music from “whiteness” and the efforts of Nazi academics in the Germany of the 1930s and 1940s to liberate music from “Jewishness.” The Nazis denounced Mendelssohn as a mediocrity whose popularity was the insidious manifestation of Jewish efforts to dominate Aryan culture. In similar fashion, Ewell proclaims that Beethoven was merely “above average as a composer,” and that he “occupies the place he does because he has been propped up by whiteness and maleness for two hundred years.” [22]

Academic journals covering virtually every field of study are exploding with ignorant rubbish of this sort. Even physics has not escaped the onslaught of racial theorizing. In a recent essay, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, assistant physics professor at the University of New Hampshire, proclaims that “race and ethnicity impact epistemic outcomes in physics,” and introduces the concept of “white empiricism” (italics in the original), which “comes to dominate empirical discourse in physics because whiteness powerfully shapes the predominant arbiters of who is a valid observer of physical and social phenomena.” [23]

Prescod-Weinstein asserts that “knowledge production in physics is contingent on the ascribed identities of the physicists,” the racial and gender background of scientists affects the way scientific research is conducted, and, therefore, the observations and experiments conducted by African-American and female physicists will produce results different than those conducted by white males. Prescod-Weinstein identifies with the contingentists who “challenge any assumption that scientific decision making is purely objective.” [24]

The assumption of objectivity is, she claims, a major problem. Scientists, Prescod-Weinstein complains, are “typically monists—believers in the idea that there is only one science … This monist approach to science typically forecloses a closer investigation of how identity and epistemic outcomes intermix. Yet white empiricism undermines a significant theory of twentieth century physics: General Relativity.” (Emphasis added) [25]

Prescod-Weinstein’s attack on the objectivity of scientific knowledge is buttressed with a distortion of Einstein’s theory.

Albert Einstein’s monumental contribution to our empirical understanding of gravity is rooted in the principal of covariance, which is the simple idea that there is no single objective frame of reference that is more objective than any other. All frames of reference, all observers, are equally competent and capable of observing the universal laws that underlie the workings of our physical universe. (Emphasis added) [26]

In fact, general relativity’s statement about covariance posits a fundamental symmetry in the universe, so that the laws of nature are the same for all observers. Einstein’s great (though hardly “simple”) initial insight, studying Maxwell’s equations on electromagnetism involving the speed of light in a vacuum, was that these equations were true in all reference frames. The fact that two observers measure a third light particle in space as traveling at the same speed, even if they are in motion relative to each other, led Einstein to a profound theoretical redefinition of how matter exists in space and time. These theories were confirmed by experiment, a result that will not be refuted by changing the race or gender of those conducting the experiment.

Mass, space, time and other quantities turned out to be varying and relative, depending on one’s reference frame. But this variation is lawful, not subjective—let alone racially determined. It bears out the monist conception. There are no such things as distinct, “racially superior,” “black female,” or “white empiricist” statements or reference frames on physical reality. There is an ascertainable objective truth, genuinely independent of consciousness, about the material world.

Furthermore, “all observers,” regardless of their education and expertise, are not “equally competent and capable” of observing, let alone discovering, the universal laws that govern the universe. Physicists, whatever their personal identities, must be properly educated, and this education, hopefully, will not be marred by the type of ideological rubbish propagated by race and gender theorists.

There is, of course, an audience for the anti-scientific nonsense propounded by Prescod-Weinstein. Underlying much of contemporary racial and gender theorizing is frustration and anger over the allocation of positions within the academy. Prescod-Weinstein’s essay is a brief on behalf of all those who believe that their professional careers have been hindered by “white empiricism.” She attempts to cover over her falsification of science with broad and unsubstantiated claims that racism is ubiquitous among white physicists, who, she alleges, simply refuse to accept the legitimacy of research conducted by black female scientists.

It is possible that a very small number of physicists are racists. But that possibility does not lend legitimacy to her efforts to ascribe to racial identity an epistemological significance that affects the outcome of research. Along these lines, Prescod-Weinstein asserts that the claims to objective truth made by “white empiricism” rest on force. This is a variant of the postmodernist dogma that what is termed “objective truth” is nothing more than a manifestation of the power relations between conflicting social forces. She writes:

White empiricism is the practice of allowing social discourse to insert itself into empirical reasoning about physics, and it actively harms the development of comprehensive understandings of the natural world by precluding putting provincial European ideas about science—which have become dominant through colonial force—into conversation with ideas that are more strongly associated with “indigeneity,” whether it is African indigeneity or another. (Emphasis added) [27]

The prevalence and legitimization of racialist theorizing is a manifestation of a deep intellectual, social, and cultural crisis of contemporary capitalist society. As in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, race theory is acquiring an audience among disoriented sections of middle-class intellectuals. While most, if not all, of the academics who promote a racial agenda may sincerely believe that they are combating race-based prejudice, they are, nevertheless, propagating anti-scientific and irrationalist ideas which, whatever their personal intentions, serve reactionary ends.

The interaction of racialist ideology as it has developed over several decades in the academy and the political agenda of the Democratic Party is the motivating force behind the 1619 Project. Particularly under conditions of extreme social polarization, in which there is growing interest in and support for socialism, the Democratic Party—as a political instrument of the capitalist class—is anxious to shift the focus of political discussion away from issues that raise the specter of social inequality and class conflict. This is the function of a reinterpretation of history that places race at the center of its narrative.

The 1619 Project did not emerge overnight. For several years, corresponding to the growing role played by various forms of identity politics in the electoral strategy of the Democratic Party, the Times has become fixated, to an extent that can be legitimately described as obsessive, on race. It often appears that the main purpose of the news coverage and commentary of the Times is to reveal the racial essence of any given event or issue.

A search of the archive of the New York Times shows that the term “white privilege” appeared in only four articles in 2010. In 2013, the term appeared in twenty-two articles. By 2015, the Times published fifty-two articles in which the term is referenced. In 2020, as of December 1, the Times had published 257 articles in which there is a reference to “white privilege.”

The word “whiteness” appeared in only fifteen Times articles in 2000. By 2018, the number of articles in which the word appeared had grown to 222. By December 1, 2020, “whiteness” was referenced in 280 articles.

The Times’ unrelenting focus on race during the past year, even in its obituary section, has been clearly related to the 2020 electoral strategy of the Democratic Party. The 1619 Project was conceived of as a critical element of this strategy. This was explicitly stated by the Times’ executive editor, Dean Baquet, in a meeting on August 12, 2019 with the newspaper’s staff:

[R]ace and understanding of race should be a part of how we cover the American story … one reason we all signed off on the 1619 Project and made it so ambitious and expansive was to teach our readers to think a little bit more like that. Race in the next year—and I think this is, to be frank, what I hope you come away from this discussion with—race in the next year is going to be a huge part of the American story. [28]

The New York Times’ effort to “teach” its readers “to think a little bit more” about race assumed the form of a falsification of American history, aimed at discrediting the revolutionary struggles that gave rise to the founding of the United States in 1776 and the ultimate destruction of slavery during the Civil War. This falsification could only contribute to the erosion of democratic consciousness, legitimize a racialized view of American history and society, and undermine the unity of the broad mass of Americans in their common struggle against conditions of social inequality and exploitation.

The racialist campaign of the New York Times has unfolded against the backdrop of a pandemic ravaging working-class communities, regardless of race and ethnicity, throughout the United States and the world. The global death toll has already surpassed 1.5 million. Within the United States, the number of COVID-19 deaths will surpass 300,000 before the end of the year. The pandemic has also brought economic devastation to millions of Americans. The unemployment rate is approaching Great Depression levels. Countless millions of people are without any source of income and depend upon food banks for their daily sustenance.

#new york times #wsws #1619 project #race #racism #racialism #whiteness #white privilege #american history #US history

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z3r0-f4ilur3 · 3 years

Text

The Record Begins With a Song Of Rebellion

First Draft Of the Capitalist Surrealist Writing Project. Steal and appropriate, critique and interrogate, with the author's full endorsement and permission. Looking (back)(for)wyrds After the Bush interregneum and the long, terrible, progress destroying Reagan years, the American empire had something like a moment of hope. Riding high on the peace dividend and a delusion of idealism among the donating classes, the economic aristocracy which in effect was the senior partner in “American Democracy” (and so duly represented in both parties) and the voter was a paternalized junior to be both petted and protected had selected the Clinton dynasty. The grand bargain between labour and capital against the state resulted in the bitter fruit of the Bush years, as Conservatives paternalists rightly mocked the Clintonian urge to middling action on domestic issues while gladly partnering with him to rob labour at large. While a wealth transfer had already been going on as part of a trend for the better part of a century, this phase in which a semi-coherent ruling class dynamic of the donating classes and the government service classes became visible. It is beyond satire now, but this was not always so visible, as racism, white supremacy, American exceptionalism, various fundementalist and conservative (as well as equally harmful, supposedly liberal versions of the same) religious beliefs; Turtle Island was rife with reasons for temporary cross class solidarity in order to oppose an other or to advance an idealistic goal.

And yet moments of class consciousness and solidarity have perenially emerged, from the “grassroots” as the insiders like to say. They frame the people as “the base” or “the grassroots” and narrowly target their interests to make people find conflict with each other. It is irrelevent (for this missive) whether this is a conscious, semi-conscious, or unconscious process; it is enough to notice it happening. Despite this, moments in the pre new-modern (to be defined later, promise~) politics that predate terms like Black Lives Matter or Trans Rights are Human Rights show that these movements represent an unbroken chain of revolutionary attempts at self-consciousness and conscience transformation that coincide and are just as important as any history of violence. The Ides of March, and the campaign of anonymous internet citizens against Scientology, represents such a moment. Occupy Wall Street was such a movement. “We’re Here, We’re Queer, Get Used To It!” was such a phrase. The many quotes attributed to names like Mandela and James Baldwin; the Black Panthers, the revolutionary feminists, the Hippie movement, down back to the (In the American mind) hoary days of yore when the Wide Awakes would march a brass band around the houses of pro slave Senators.

It is a poor yet accurate summation to say that the ‘present’ (a dubious notion) political reality is the sum of all of these and more; a reader can orient themselves to the history of late stage capitalism by the growth of the donating classes influence and the acceleration of their detachment from society at large. Moments which also impact this reality are the donating classes sense of pessimism about the future; the devaluing of nearly all forms of labour, the increasing visibility of law enforcement brutality; the list can be referenced in the moment to moment, wide eyed and angry reporting of self-matyring, news-junkie amateur journalists found anywhere online, the shocked and angry expressions of young activists at protests and the weary, numbed faces of the old. Up and down the class system, there has been a wide spread death of hope.

Enter the climate crisis.

Before climate consciousness achieved real steam, our escatological fears were (mostly) confined to the realm of human action or cosmic events unimaginable (and unrelatable) to the modern person’s experience of life. For decades, the effects of climate change were reported to a world told not to care. As Terrance Mkenna said, ““The apocalypse is not something which is coming. The apocalypse has arrived in major portions of the planet and it’s only because we live within a bubble of incredible privilege and social insulation that we still have the luxury of anticipating the apocalypse.”

The impact of this can and will be expanded upon, but it is safe to say that the bubble has been popped. Whatever finds popular currency within the dialogue around it, that the climate is changing rapidly in ways inemical to human society at large/at present is true by material impact; people everywhere have experienced some negative result of the changing conditions, and there is a rising anxiety in the classes who cannot afford an escape pod or fortress bunker that the people they’ve entrusted themselves to intend to withdraw to safety and abandon them, or even expose them to more harm in order to “make more of the earth’s carrying weight available in the reclamation” (this kind of talk is not alien to them, though this specific quotation is my own invention.

It is important to acknowledge that the bubble has popped. It is the exclamation on Capitalist Realism; it is the moment of awareness, that encounter with a death of hope, in which Capitalist Surrealism, our phenomenological experience of the Capitalist Real, is born. While this Surrealist stage is both uncomfortable and has deleterious effects on the human condition, it represents the chink in the armour of banality and inertia, and the diminishing politics of the powerful. The sense that anything, absolutely *anything,* can happen to you, is both incredibly terrifying, and when looked at squarely, an opportunity for radical freedom.

It is this radical freedom that we see ourselves invited to in the many facets of human expression and convention which have experienced an awakening of new consciousness (or the restoration of old ones. Beliefs, ways of interacting with the world, and surviving are no longer benefited by or even neutrally treated by their operating environment anymore; if the complete weight of propaganda in circulation at the moment could be translated into sound, it would present an impenetrable and unlistenable wall.

It is that environment that individual ideologies not sanctioned by the operating environment have struggled against; all of them now have new life and vigor because despite that wall, and the spectacle societies which generate them, the literal truth of material impacts trump all prior arguments. With awareness of most likely outcomes of the climate crisis on a sliding scale, we see radicalization and existential depression of all varieties spike; the answers they attempt to generate to these apparent conditions lack hope in broad but uneven spikes along that scale of awareness, with the suicidally depressed expert climatologist and the radical anarcho-primitivist sharing the same ontological space in orientation to that crisis.

This project, among other things, is an attempt to generate an alternative answer (what that project consists of is entirely based in literature and mutual aid, the oldest Christian platforms for emancipatory action.) Terms like Solarpunk and Cloud City Futures approach but fail to capture the spirit of an alternative answer, mostly with an appeal to the world of aesthetics, a dubious method for summoning change at best. Terminology alone, or even in tandem with education, is also not sufficient; the noise environment they enter into immediately drowns out the creators meaning, especially if these terms are successful and gain currency with the wealthy.

Rather, we must articulate the positive from all our apparent negatives: The apocalyptic futures we anticipate cannot begin actually describe the terrain of the future, and the apparancy of our material conditions impact on our lives is now drowning out the sound of the standing ideologies. This is a brave time, where people blaze trails for others to follow out of the collapsing structures of the past and into the dwelling places of the new future. Our experience of reality, though surreal, has now unlocked an awareness of an apparent power: making meaning.

It is with the tools of meaning-making that these, who are the heirs of their elders, queer and colour revolutionary and indigenous land defender and abolitionist, pioneer the hopeful vistas of the future. It is necessary that they *be* hopeful; it was the Buddha who taught that people deceived by Samsara may be “deceived” by the apparent gifts of pursuing enlightenment, the majority of which are ancillary incidentals not to be meditated on. The king calls his indolent heirs out of the burning palace with a promise of gifts; when they arrive, they protest the lack of gifts, but it is in his embrace of them we realize they are the gift, and their survival was worth the promise of chariots and ponies.

But there must also be chariots, and ponies; luxuries, and finery; the grim tools of “defense” and all the things the human animal finds comforting in their resting environment to assure them of its stability. In the Dao De Jing, (Though Mueller butchers the poetry,) the Sage articulates this and describes how to create it: “Let there be a small country with few people,

Who, even having much machinery, don't use it.

Who take death seriously and don't wander far away.

Even though they have boats and carriages, they never ride in them.

Having armor and weapons, they never go to war.

Let them return to measurement by tying knots in rope.

Sweeten their food, give them nice clothes, a peaceful abode and a relaxed life.

Even though the next country can be seen and its doges and chickens can be heard,

The people will grow old and die without visiting each other's land.” A.C. Mueller Translation, The Dao De Jing, Attributed to Lao Tzu

It is as naked an appeal to a return to the life of the community and the village as can be found. A return to idigenous ways of being, which speaks to the preservation of folk ways, while the reality that the sage is administering them (even if only by moral teaching) shows a potential for new ideas to be instanced; innovation is not a property innate to the colonizing and walled world, and memetic culture and the society of truth-telling through representation around it reflect callbacks to this desire. The political movement around Land Back, while perennial to the causes of indigenous people, crystalizes an actionable answer for individuals and collectives to support. Its cousins in other colour movements, many of them representing indigenous people displaced by imperialism in the first place, are also generative of positive futures; it is a fact of history that as the rights of people classified as “minorities” are raised, the general quality of life for all in society rises, with the exception of those who could never be touched but by the highest tides.

These movements and moments of consciousness are their own inestimable goods, not mere ends for the would be conscious person to hijack for their goals. This is in fact a position inimical to the success of any of these movements; grifting starts at home, and it is the white leftist who is more easily conquered by the white liberal, since neither of them have conquered their own whiteness in the first place. But that supporting them generates positive benefits for all can only be argued against if you value the lives and comforts of some over others; those who value the general benefit first can see a clear path.

It is that clarity that gives meaning makers license to create the vistas of the future. It is the “Mandate of Heaven” that endorses the artists, a general operating license to create. Because the material impact of the present is louder than the noise of Capital, there an outburst of fertility and growth, the very seeds of hope, breaking out in the midst of this Surrealism. It is with the tools of meaning making, and the canvas of the crisis, that people escape the real.

#capitalist hell #Capitalist Surrealism #newfuture #say anything

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joaqqquiin · 3 years

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POLITICAL DYNASTY - AMPATUAN

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Introduction

Politics in the Philippines have been quite a contentious and fragile topic for the past decades. Politics have led to numerous outcomes such as disunity, distrust, dissension, dispute, and even violence. These are some of the factors that have contributed to how society in the Philippines acts in the present which commonly affects the atmosphere the people work and dwell in, the socio-economic status of Filipinos, and most importantly, the well-being of individuals. One example of a hot topic in the past is regarding the feud between late former president Ferdinand Marcos and the Aquino family. This topic is a topic that a number of people would call controversial due to the mixed views and feelings people have in regards to the topic. A riveting concept the two families have in common is that they are both political dynasties in the Philippines. Some people and politicians would consider political dynasties as a root cause of issues that arise such as poverty, bias, impunity, and even quarrels between political dynasties that may get in the way of making rational decisions and lead to neglection of appointed duties. A case in point which proves that political dynasties are nothing but problems was the largest massacre that the Ampatuan dynasty committed.

The Ampatuan massacre, or popularly known as the Maguindanao massacre, is a carnage which was a ploy made by the Ampatuan family to gain the upper hand against their rivals. This unfortunate event that the Ampatuan dynasty planned was recorded as the single deadliest event for journalists in history. Being a journalist is a reputable job as one is tasked with the obligation to inform the public with the news, however, the Ampatuan family has dented the country’s reputation of being a safe space for journalists as 32 were killed in the massacre. The Maguindanao massacre alone may show that the Philippines is not an utterly safe place not only for journalists but in general. The Ampatuan family has contributed greatly to putting the Philippines in a position where press freedom is attacked, impunity is exercised, and power is corrupted. The Ampatuan dynasty jeopardized the credibility of the nation as a fun and safe place to spend time with your family.

CHAPTER 2

SUMMARY

Background

The Ampatuan family is considered the largest political dynasty present in our country with over 51 members. A few prime members of this family are considered to be the most politically involved and have had the most transgressions. The late Andal Ampatuan Sr. was a patriarch of the Ampatuan clan and was also a main suspect of one of the largest massacres in the Philippines, the Maguindanao massacre. Before the case was resolved, Ampatuan died after falling into a coma caused by a heart attack. Andal Ampatuan has 4 sons, namely, Andal Ampatuan Jr, Sajid Ampatuan, Zaldy Ampatuan, Anwar Ampatuan Sr.

Andal Ampatuan Jr. was the 8th child of Andal Ampatuan Sr. and Bai Laila Uy-Ampatuan. He was known as the mastermind of the Maguindanao massacre and was convicted of 57 counts of murder alongside his brother, Zaldy Ampatuan. He is currently located at the New Bilibid Prison where he is sentenced to a maximum of 40 years without parole.

Sajid Ampatuan was among the accused of plotting the massacre. He claims that he had already cut ties with his family and said that he assisted his wife who was filing her candidacy at the time of the massacre. He was not present during the promulgation of judgement and was given 5 days to reason out his absence. Due to this instance, he was sentenced to life imprisonment with graft charges and lost his chance to appeal since the rule of court states that absence during the promulgation is not justified.

Zaldy Ampatuan was a governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) however he was expelled from office due to his participation in the massacre. It was said that he planned the Maguindanao massacre alongside his brother, Andal Ampatuan Jr. However, all charges against him were dropped, citing lack of evidence. This was until Justice Secretary, Alberto Agra, restored the murder charges against Ampatuan due to new findings.

Anwar Ampatuan Sr. is the brother of Andal Ampatuan Jr. He was part of the mastermind group and was also convicted with 57 counts of murder. Unlike Anwar Sajid and Anwar Jr. who were identified as first-class convicts or those who had plotted and fired at the victims, Anwar Sr. fell under the second class of suspects or those who had prior knowledge of the crime but were not at the crime scene.

Political History

The Patriarch of the Ampatuan clan, Andal Ampatuan Sr. was already a vice mayor in charge of Maganoy when President Marcos appointed him as mayor. Maganoy is now Shariff Aguack. However, in 1986, due to the People Power Revolution, President Marcos was departed, and Corazon Aquino came into power. As she came into power, she replaced every locally elected official with officers-in-charge. Ampatuan Sr. was also replaced by another Ampatuan, Datu Modi who served for two years in that capacity.

In 1988, after the 1988 local election, he served as mayor for 10 years as he had been winning three consecutive local elections 1988, 1992, and 1995. In his 10th year as mayor in 1998, he was elected as governor and started to accelerate his Clan activities. His family occupied almost all the political costs in the area, the family tried to widen the range of the power, and even, eighteen of the mayors in Maguindanao were once members of the Ampatuan clan.

In 2001, his clan solidified its hold on power by keeping a close friendship with Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. The reason for this is because Arroyo assumed the presidency after EDSA People Power II. And His choice was excellent. The family was appraised by the “Popular support” and openly supports Arroyo. In 2004, during the 2004 presidential elections, Arroyo came into power succeeding the previous president Joseph Estrada and dominated the polls in Shariff Aguack and most of Maguindanao.

And lastly, in 2006, Arroyo issued Executive Order 546, allowing local officials and the police to deputize local militia to aid in the fight against insurgents. This greatly contributed to the establishment of power in the Ampatuan Clan. The Executive Order was issued shortly after an assassination attempt on Andal Ampatuan Sr. and the end of the Clan's history and relationships was dreadful.

Issues they were associated with

It is no secret that fear is often instilled to control people. The Ampatuan clan, despite being popular and influential, they were feared. Numerous journalists would say, “They own the people'' or “The word of the Ampatuans was the law. The lives of the people living in Maguindanao would lie in the hands of the Ampatuan family as they had a private army consisting of 2000-5000 armed men composed of government-supported militia, local police, and military personnel. An instance when this private army was put into use was on the 23rd of November back in 2009. This instance was the Maguindanao massacre which would be the biggest issue of this political dynasty.

Maguindanao mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr. was challenged by Buluan vice mayor Esmael Mangudadatu as he was going to file his certificate of candidacy (COC). Vice mayor Esmael received death threats from his rivals so he thought that inviting journalists to his filing of COC would lessen the chances of ambushes. Esmael invited 37 journalists with him to file his COC. Along with the 37 journalists, there were also reporters, lawyers, aides and his family. As 58 of them were on their way to the Elections provincial office, they were kidnapped and murdered. Some were even raped before they were killed. There were at least 198 suspects including Andal Ampatuan Jr., Andal Ampatuan Sr. and several other members of the Ampatuan clan who were charged with 57 counts of murder. However, this was not the only issue the family had. They have a history of killing people way before the Massacre.

Back in 2005, 25 armed men in the military uniform killed the wife and child of Mando Tambungalan. He had identified that the suspects were hired killers on the Ampatuan payroll since he had been targeted by the Ampatuans for running for vice mayor of Datu Piang in 2001. In 2006, the Ampatuans planted a bomb which exploded near the Shariff Aguak market, killing five people, including Ed Mangansakan who was a known weapons supplier for the Ampatuans. Another instance of their wrongdoings was when motorcycle-riding gunmen, linked to the Ampatuan clan, shot and killed Judge Sahara Silongan while he was driving his family home. A relative of the judge believes he was killed for failing to issue an illegal warrant of arrest demanded by the Ampatuans. As well as in 2008, a cousin of Ampatuan, Jr., and his armed men allegedly shot and killed eight members of the Lumenda and Aleb families. One gunman told the Human Rights Watch that he and the others were ordered to shoot the family because the Ampatuans doubted their loyalty.

CHAPTER III

REFLECTION

Abad, Anton Angelo T.

My thoughts about the Ampatuan clan is that I'm surprised to see that they haven’t all been imprisoned and even some of them are still not arrested. I was shocked to read that they are responsible for the massacre and that they only did it because they didn’t want to get arrested. I think that people should learn more about these clans and start to plan a way to prevent them from gaining too much power. Because just like the Ampatuan clan they have so much power that they have their own private army and were able to delay there inevitable arrest for 51 murder.

Golamco, Janise Kate A.

The Philippines suffers from widespread corruption. From embezzlement, nepotism or police brutality, the common denominator to these actions is greed. Political dynasties such as the Ampatuan family are a huge factor to further influence these acts. Yet, people continue to tolerate their wrongdoings by doing nothing to prevent them. Because of fear, people have been silenced by their own timidity. Because of their own selfish desire, civilians were caught in the crossfire resulting in one of the largest politically involved massacres. The innocent lives lost cannot compare to merely a few years of imprisonment.

As students continue to grow and learn, it is vital that people know of the things that harm their society and strive for change. Influential families, such as the Ampatuans, use their power at their own disposal and further contributes to socio-economic inequality. It is why knowledge is greatly needed in order to stop corruption. By learning about the vulnerabilities and impacts of misconduct citizens are given a chance to end impunity once and for all.

Lee, Noah

After exploring the largest political dynasty in the Philippines, there are a number of things left on my mind. It has been 19 years since the gruesome mass murder took place and threatened the Philippines. But I would appreciate that still now, we are studying this and learning about that happening and being reminded to be wiser in how to live as people in this country. We have to know what is currently happening, and what is harming or damaging the order of our country. It is our duty to argue for justice in our society and politics and to heritage it to our next generations. To achieve our duty, we all have to have a bright notion about the corruption of power that someone longs for enough to commit mass murder.

However, the most damning aspect of the report for me was the support of the Ampatuans by the state, the police and the military, allowing them to consolidate their power. I strongly oppose the idea of making use of the public power for the private benefit of chosen families. It is said that there is no person above the law but I feel irritated about the fact that there is a person who takes advantage of the laws. Until we can generate real justice, we should keep our eyes on our country.

Velasquez, Joaquin Gabriel D.

Having the power to be able to do everything we want is something that if not all, most people dream of. The power to be exempted from the law, the power to generate money, the power to rule the world, or the power to make this all come true. To be able to obtain that amount of power is like living everyone’s dreams, but no, it makes us corrupt. Corruption of power is one of the deadliest aspects that can not only destroy an individual but also a whole nation. Corruption has been present in the Philippines for decades already, it has never left the country and I think it does not plan on leaving anytime soon. Corruption has many factors, it can be through pocketing money, abusement of power, and even the act of impunity. Impunity is as dangerous as corruption as it serves as an immunity pass to those with power. There have been several occurrences in which both impunity and corruption have been present, working hand in hand. A famous case is in the presence of political dynasties. Political dynasties have been believed to be the root cause of far-reaching problems in the Philippines.

The Ampatuan dynasty or family is one of many political dynasties present in the Philippines. The Ampatuan family is known for planning the biggest massacre which ended up killing around 57 people. Several suspects have been charged with 57 counts of murder. However, due to impunity, a large number of suspects are still at large. In respect to this, I do not condone the presence of political dynasties in our country. As a part of the youth, it is important that we are aware of when corruption and its likes are present, lurking around us. I may not have the power to be able to do everything I want but I have the power that not everyone has the ability to do, speaking up and using my voice to amplify the voice of those who are silenced by the effects of the wrongdoings of these political dynasties. Raising one’s voice does not necessarily mean joining rallies but spreading awareness regarding the wide-ranging effects of the influential families sitting in power. Not speaking up and allowing corrupted families in power to continue and degrade the country’s socio-economic status will make us all accomplices to the destruction of our nation as a whole for failing to protect it.

CHAPTER IV

CONCLUSION

Conclusion

The Ampatuans remain a powerful and dangerous force with which to be reckoned. For years, the department of justice and the military has been trying to get the Ampatuan family to pay for their actions yet they haven’t achieved full justice. A police officer once asked, “what do we do? This is an influential family.” The Ampatuan family is a powerful family with many connections making it hard for people to stand up against them. The trial of the Ampatuan massacre is a case that has far-reaching implications not only on press freedom in the Philippines but also on one of the biggest threats to the country’s democracy, impunity.

With impunity present in our country, killings and other illegal doings happen all around with no one to be held accountable. Thousands have been killed with impunity in the Philippines’ illegal war on drugs alone, how many more innocent people have died from other activities and remain greatly suppressed, away from where the world can see. In these cases, it is imperative that we equip ourselves with the proper knowledge and be a voice to those who are voiceless.

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notes-n-notes · 3 years

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The Theory of Proletarian Dictatorship and Scientific Communism

The analysis of capitalist society made by Marx explains the main "laws of motion" of this society, the specific laws of this specific historical-economic structure. It appears that the development of capitalism develops all its objective internal contradictions, prepares the material prerequisites of socialism within the bosom of capitalist society, sharpens the contradictions of interests among the classes which are the main contradictions of capitalism, leads to the revolution of the proletariat and guarantees its victory. However, the very course of the proletarian revolution, which shows itself as the highest type of class struggle and passes over into civil war, brings the problem of revolution far outside the bounds of the interrelations of economics and politics, of the social-economic structure and its political superstructure, as well as of those transformations of catastrophic order which inevitably arise in the course of the victorious struggle of the proletariat.

Here we must dwell above all on the general theory of the state as developed by Marx and Engels. Surely in no sphere of social science has so much idealist and even mystical fog collected as in the doctrine of the state, that citadel of the concentrated power of the ruling classes. The idea of the "eternity"1) of this institution, its obligatory character for every form of human community, its universality and extra-historical nature, has been and still is prevalent as the main dogma of the majority of bourgeois theories of the state and of the law, independently of whether we are faced with the elaborations of "sociology" or specific "juridical formalism",which looks upon the state and law as an autonomous sphere developing according to its own laws and in no way fundamentally determined by other aspects of social development. With Marx and Engels the state is above all an historical category, and furthermore, historical in the dual sense of the word. That is, in the first place it only arises in accordance with definite social and historical conditions, together with the rise of private property and the division of society into classes. It "dies out" together with the disappearance of classes. So it has its historical beginning and its historical end. Its existence does not coincide with the existence of society as such. It is not an indispensable attribute. In the second place, it is also historical in the sense that it really only exists in its concrete historical form of an adequate, historical-concrete, social-economic formation. Consequently, just as, in the sphere of economic categories, means of production only become capital under definite conditions, under a definite historic form, in exactly the same way society appears in a state form only under definite conditions. Just as in the sphere of the doctrine of society as a whole, "general laws" (Engels) include a wealth of laws of historically determined, concrete "formations", "means of production", "economic structures", so in the sphere of state doctrine its general definitions include a wealth of concrete and specific forms of state power.

The state, then, is by no means a power forced on society from outside; neither is it the "realisation of the ethical idea", "the image and the realisation of reason", as Hegel maintains. It is simply a product of society at a certain stage of evolution. It is the confession that this society has become hopelessly divided against itself, has entangled itself in irreconcilable contradictions which it is powerless to banish. In order that these contradictions, these classes with conflicting economic interests, may not annihilate themselves and society in a useless struggle, a power becomes necessary that stands apparently above society and has the function of keeping down the conflicts and maintaining "order". And this power, the outgrowth of society, but assuming supremacy over it and becoming more and more divorced from it, is the state.2)

Thus the state is the product of the class division of society. Being the product of the development of society as a whole, it is also a completely class organisation. Functioning as a force which "moderates" the conflicts of classes, it is far from being a "neutral", "superclass" quantity. It "moderates" but is far from "reconciling". It "moderates" by depriving the enslaved and exploited of the means and weapons of battle, by stupefying them with a number of ideological influences, by preserving the "order" which is the condition of the process of exploitation.3) The very existence of the state is an expression of the complete irreconcilability of classes. Consequently at the basis of the rise of the state lies the process of the formation of classes. The process of the formation of classes means, however, the conversion of the process of production and reproduction into the process of production and reproduction of the surplus product alienated by the ruling class. This is the economic foundation for the appearance and consequent functioning of the state. The economic conditions of production, which are simultaneously the process of exploitation, need "order", that is an objective, forcible guarantee. Therefore economic exploitation is supplemented by political oppression, the economic "relation of mastery-enslavement" ("Herrschafts und Knechtschaftsverhältnis," Marx) is fixed in functions, embracing the whole of society in their organs of political organisation, the state. Economics engender politics, which is itself only "concentrated economics" (Lenin), "ökonomische Potenz" (Engels). Class society is a relative and deeply contradictory unity. Therefore its categories also bear the seal of this. Hence the original character of the dialectic of society and the state. The state is at the same time the product of society and its political expression. But this expression can only be a class one. The category of oppression, corresponding to the category of exploitation, presupposes a relation between the social subject of oppression (i.e. exploitation) and its object. In such a case the whole of society is an exploiting society. The state is an utterly class machine of oppression, for it is the dominant class "constituted as state power". So therefore here there can be no question of social "solidarity", of a really super-class force, of the representative of the "general" interest, " general " will of the so-called "whole".4) But by state two things are often meant which do not overlap. For by state is meant only the organised subject of oppression, i.e. the organisation of the ruling class embracing the whole of society, having as its object the exploited class, but looked at without including that object (just as by trust is usually meant the "apparatus" of the trust with its direction, but without the workers who are the object of the squeezing out of surplus value), for by state is meant the whole of society in its state political form, i.e. the organisation of the ruling class as subject, with the inclusion of all its "citizens", including also the politi cally oppressed, economically exploited classes (i.e. class). How ever, even in the last case we can speak only of a class state, for the inclusion of all classes in a so-called state does not contradict one scrap its class-oppressing function, which infers a "normal" course of the process of exploitation. For in the given case the exploited class is only introduced as object. It is not a participator in the "machine" of oppression. Just as all society is exploiting, as a type, although its oppressed classes are only the objects of exploitation, and the state is an organisation of enslavement, though, in the given conception, it not only includes the enslavers but also the object of enslavement. "From the political point of view the state and the structure of society are not two separate things: the state is the structure of society",5) but "political power is precisely the official expression of the antagonism of classes in civic society".6) We may also look at the state as the organisation of the ruling class in the narrow sense of the word, as the "machine" of oppression without including the object of that oppression just as Marx looked at it in his mature works. The "general utility functions" of state power (railroad construction, fight against infectious diseases, etc.) are far from being the expression of "solidarity" but are the essential condition of the "normal" course of exploitation. "Social legislation" generally represents the same sort of estimation of forces as a concession to workers during a strike, with a transference of the process of exploitation to a higher stage. Here, therefore, there is never a question of the changing of the class essence of the state, as such, and of the class significance of its functions.

It is not difficult to see this upon an analysis of the function of the state in any historical type, including the analysis of the modern capitalist state. The laws passed (the legislative function) protect and assist in equal directions the enlarged reproduction of capitalist relations (the interests of property, of the balance of trade, of accumulation; the interests of the guaranteeing of power, the suppression and corresponding education of the oppressed classes; the interests of "defence" and attack against competitors, etc.). "The protection of personal security and social order" (police, gendarmerie, army), "the protection of inherited and acquired rights" (justice), the cultural functions (education, hygiene, etc.) and the state church, the struggle against competing states, all this in essence has a clearly expressed class character, being covered by the specific ideology of "law" as the more or less ideal standards of human communion. The machinery of oppression, possessing its own material technique (the means of physical destruction, punishment and fear) and powerful organisations furnished with this technique (the army, police, courts, etc.) which form parts of the universal organisation of the ruling class embracing all society-this machinery appears under the pseudonym of the totality of legal standards, of an ideal complex functioning by force of its own inner logic and conviction. Such fetishism of state power and the specific "judicial cretinism" corresponding to it, which looks at law as a self-sufficient social substance, moving exclusively by the logic of its inner, immanent laws, congeals into the system of "pure law". All this mysticism is dissipated, however, once we expose the following fundamental facts and connections.

1. States correspond in their types to social formations. The economic structure of society determines the type of state power and its structure.

2. The dominant class economically is, à la longue, the class constituted as the state power, i.e. which is politically dominant.

3. The chief function of state power is the guaranteeing of the process of exploitation.

4. It is different from all other organisations of the dominant class in that the state is all embracing, it is the most general organisation, representing the interests of the dominant class as a whole 7) and monopolising the material means of violence and the chief means of spiritual enslavement.

5. The rules of state organisation, i.e. the generally obligatory standards of behaviour, behind which stands the whole apparatus of compulsion, protect and facilitate the reproduction of the process of exploitation of that concretely historical type, which corresponds to the given mode of production and, consequently, to the given type of state.

The ideologues of the bourgeoisie, insofar as they are compelled to recognise scraps of Marxism in the structures of the "Machttheorie" (the theory of social force, of rule, subjection, etc.) generally extract the revolutionary sting from the Marxian theory, extinguishing the idea of class, blunting the chief function of intermediary of the process of exploitation into numerous "general utility" functions, reducing the exploiting and oppressor rôle of the state to its historical sources and treating contemporary manifestations of this type only as "excesses" and "abuses". The consistently developed Marxist theory is anathema to them, for, as one of the high priests of bourgeois political science, G. Jellinek, frankly wrote: "The practical consequences of the force theory lie not in the foundation (Begründung) but the destruction (Zerstörung) of the state;" "it paves the way to the permanent revolution."8)

The most important tendency in modern bourgeois state science, the school of Herr Kelsen, starts out methodologically from the teleological standardised conception of law and from a purely ideological treatment of the state, adjusted to the system of its standards. Speaking generally, the whole fashionable doctrine of the "aim in law", and the "aim in the state", etc., is founded on the fact that the state in capitalist society to a certain degree embodies a rational origin in opposition to the irrational current of economic life. "Civic society" is anarchic and elemental. It is disconnected "connection", "disconnected society", as Fourier defined it. It is not, as we have seen, "a purposive subject", it is not "organised capitalism", and cannot be this.

A state-political organisation is an organised quantity (though it does not organise the chief production relations of capitalism). It is a purposive subject. Its general aims are formulated in its laws (the system of standards is the system of aims). Its operative function is its politics. But it is far from following from this that these same aims cannot be looked upon as functions, while these functions can be looked upon in their historical arising, development and doom as causally conditioned phenomena. The full bottomless error of Kelsen's system is theoretically founded on the fact that the dialectic of freedom and necessity, of causality and teleology, is completely foreign to him. With him a teleological series swallows up "causal necessity", whilst he himself has to be explained on this very ground. Foreign to him also is the conception of the specific interrelations of "civic society" with its spontaneity, and of the capitalist state, the range of whose power is very limited by this spontaneity (e.g. the capitalist state and the economic crisis), and the very type of which (and from the point of view of its limitedness, also) is defined (causally determined) by the economic structure of capitalism.9) Kelsen's treatment of the state as a quantity having only an "ideal" existence, while the author here appeals to Marx who put the state in the superstructure, is based on the confusion of ideology and superstructure. The latter conception is the broader one. The state is a social-political superstructure, but the " material attributes " (arms, the whole material and technical basis of the apparatus of compulsion, prisons, etc.) and the human organisation (army, bureaucracy) can only be declared to be phenomena with "merely an ideal existence"10) from an obviously stupid standpoint. Kelsen's criticism of Marxism in other directions is impossibly feeble (although in his person we have one of the most eminent representatives of modern bourgeois political science), "Of course," he declares, "the modern state can be looked upon as a means for (Mittel zum Zweck) the economic exploitation of one class by another."11) But according to Kelsen this is not the root of the matter, for: (a) there have been states in which it was impossible to speak of economic exploitation as being essential to their content; (b) economic exploitation "is in no wise (keineswegs) the only aim of the modern state"12); (c) but in the first place a state organisation is conceivable (denkbar, our emphasis, N.B.) having as its object the prevention (Verhinderung) of economic exploitation; (d) this is expressed in the fact that the modern state which was not in a position to abolish exploitation by means of social legislation, nevertheless showed in this legislation a tendency "towards the liquidation (Aufhebung) of class opposition".13)

In this regard it is worth mentioning that (ad a) there were no such states à la longue; (ad b) it is impossible to confuse the "only" "aim" (it would be more accurate to say function), with the main "aim" to which the others are subordinated. The fact is that the main function is the guaranteeing of the process of exploitation, but this function is in its turn accompanied by others which have a derivative importance; (ad c) the "conceivable" state of Kelsen is self-contradictory and inconceivable, if we take as premise the class nature of the state, except for the proletarian dictatorship which is a state and riot a state at the same time, as we shall see below. But Kelsen is here in fact not speaking of proletarian dictatorship; (ad d) the reference to the modern bourgeois state is far from convincing; this state is a long way from manifesting these tendencies of which Herr Kelsen speaks. His statements in fact can only rest either on the recognition of the "tendency" towards a softening of the class struggle in general, which is decisively refuted by the facts, or on a non-class treatment of the state. It is aimed at showing the latest practice of the state.However, this practice also is fundamentally contradictory to his theory which is founded on facts from the period when the bourgeoisie manoeuvred and retreated (he turned this circumstance into a matter of principle, as being the "higher justice" of the "neutral" and "super-class" state). Consequently facts have reduced the whole theory of Kelsen to nothing. O. Spann in an essentially less interesting but more open fashion formulates the shabby basis of all idealist arguments against the Marxian theory of the state by connecting them with an "argumentation" against the materialist conception of history, which he reproaches for a "lack of true idealism". " So we see in the extremely pure working out of a preferential position for action, above all economic action, in regard to all spiritual things, which is characteristic of Marx's historical materialism, a legitimate mode of thought which is at bottom barbarous, since it is hostile to the spirit and to culture. Historical materialism is a system which devalues the innermost noble creations of culture, science, art, religion, morality, by seeing them as reflexes or 'superstructures' of purely economic processes of development."14) The causal explanation of a phenomenon, the discovery of its social genesis, means, according to this strange logic, its devaluation. To declare war on religious mediævalism is to declare oneself a barbarian. From this standpoint the acceptance of the Darwinian theory means to start howling like a wolf. However, "the irony of history"leads one to quite different facts and logical conclusions.

So state organisation strengthens a definite, historically derived, exploiting mode of production, being, according to its type, the expression of a specific, historical, social and economic structure. All the chief means of physical violence and spiritual enslavement are accumulated in the state organisation. The transition to a new economic formation, therefore, cannot take place without the overthrow of the ruling class, and consequently also, without the partial, and, during a proletarian revolution, the complete destruction of its state organisation. Victory over a class adversary implies the disorganisation of his main forces. Thus the social revolution is bound to have its political side. This most acute class struggle, passing over into civil war, has its fundamental objective conflict between the growth of productive forces and the form of productive relations, a conflict of which the decisive clash of classes is the subjective expression. So it is absolutely impossible to divorce the acute struggle from its catastrophic objective conditions in the economy of society, conditions which determine this struggle. Kelsen attacks the Marxian doctrine here also. His argument is as follows. The development of the " basis" (Unterbau) is a continuous evolutionary process, "ein Kontinuum". Every change is "a chain of infinitely small 'revolutions', each change is such a 'revolution'.15) Therefore there can only be revolution in the sphere of ideology, or, in other words, 'revolution' is a conception which can only be constituted in the sphere of standard, ethical and political or juridical analysis."16) It is not hard to expose the sophism of the small " revolutions ". Of course, the contradiction between continuity and interruption is immanent in the whole process of development and every change is a change of a qualitative character. But there are "leaps" and "leaps". There is "quality" and "quality". And it is this problem of quality and quality itself which entirely escapes Herr Kelsen. Capitalist society develops by contradictions all the time. It even passes through important phases of these changes (industrial capitalism, imperialism). But these changes are not of the same qualitative kind as the transition from capitalism to socialism. In the latter case the leap is one of another type which is immeasurably more "one of principle", one passing beyond the structural forms of capitalism in general, and the new quality is a quality of absolutely different measure. From the point of view of the capitalist system in general the new quality is only socialism and the leap is only the proletarian revolution. To put changes inside the capitalist system on one level with the liquidation of that system and the transition to socialism means not to see and not to understand the chief laws of the process. It is just because of this that it is impossible to dissolve revolution in evolution and to change the new form of the whole social being for the small cash of molecular changes of the usual evolutional type. The second chief mistake lies in the mechanical divorce from one another of the different aspects of vitally active society. The historical process is a contradictory but single process of the reproduction of social life. "Basis" and "superstructure" go through their vital circuit in a state of constant reciprocity and "submitting" to the single law of social development of the whole, which is also the determining law of the development of the basis. Therefore the very possibility that one part of social being is capable of causal examination and the other of standard and teleological examination (only!) is ruled out beforehand. It is impossible to drag revolution, as the victorious struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, as a "leap", out of the whole social and historical context. It is an "element" in the reproduction of social life, a reproduction only possible in its new historical and economic form. The fetters of the old productive relations must be broken (this is the basis and not "ideology", for the information of Herr Kelsen), the condition of which is the destruction of the state machine of the bourgeoisie. Here Marx emphasises just that destructive 17) process, the necessity for the proletariat " to concentrate against it (the state machine, N.B.) all the forces of destruction ".18) The question of the destruction of the state machine of the bourgeoisie or its utilisation by the proletariat is far from being one of terminology. Despite Kelsen, it has an immense importance both practically and theoretically. Theoretically, since it speaks of the peculiar law of the process, since it poses the question of the organisation of a new type of state (both in class content, in its organisational forms, and in the tendencies of its development). Practically, since it correspondingly directs the whole strategy and tactics of the proletariat. And along this line runs a bloody furrow between social-democracy and communism.

Thus

1. The main tendencies in capitalist development lead to a conflict between the development of productive forces which has prepared the material prerequisites of the new society (concentration of the means of production, socialisation of labour) and its capitalist husk (Hulle, Marx), a conflict of such intensity that this husk becomes incompatible with the further development of productive forces and therefore of society as a whole.

2. This conditions an extreme sharpening of class contradictions and tensity of class struggle. "The more or less concealed civil war within existing society" "is transformed into open revolution".19)

3. Concentrating all destructive forces against the state machine of the bourgeoisie, the proletariat violently smashes that machine.

4. It creates a new type of state, the dictatorship of the proletariat. The class struggle "inevitably leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat".

5. "The proletariat will use its political supremacy, to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e. of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible." 20)

"Between capitalist and communist society," Marx wrote in The Critique of the Gotha Programme, "lies a period of revolutionary transformation from one to the other. There corresponds also to this a political transition period during which the state can be nothing else than the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."21) We must dwell in the first place on the dictatorship of the proletariat from the point of view of the definition of the state organisation as being the general class organisation of rule which guarantees the process of economic exploitation. It is quite clear that it does not come under that definition. But this is far from implying that the state of the proletariat is divorced from its material economic basis. If the exploiting types of state power in all their variety of historical forms had as their main function the enlarged reproduction of productive relations on which they were based and of which they were the concentrated political expression, then the dictatorship of the proletariat has as its chief function the enlarged reproduction of new, socialist productive relations. If, for example, the capitalist state facilitated the eating up of pre-capitalist economic forms, then the dictatorship of the proletariat, after the expropriation of the expropriators, is a means for the further growth of socialist forms, a powerful lever for the liquidation and refashioning of capitalist and small property owning economic relations. But for the very reason that economic development in the transition period is nothing but the final disappearance of the relics of former economic formations and types, and so therefore of the relics of exploitation and of the material starting-points from which it arises, for this very reason the dictatorship of the proletariat bears within itself the seeds of its own dying away. So that even from the point of view of its economic function the dictatorship of the proletariat is both a state and not a state. It is the last historical form of the state in which it finally merges and dissolves into society.,Consequently: (1) it is the organ of the ruling class, the proletariat; (2) this organisation has as its economic function the enlarged reproduction of socialist productive relations; (3) it is the general, widest and universal organisation of the proletariat, directed by the advance guard, the party; (4) it monopolises all the means of physical compulsion and the spiritual refashioning of men; (5) its immediate function is the suppression of the resistance of the exploiters, their breaking up and liquidation; this function of decisive and merciless class struggle carried through to the end is, of course, the most important prerequisite for all that follows. Here, consequently, we have a relation of rule. But this relation is a vanishing quantity insofar as in the course of the class struggle classes themselves at a definite stage of development disappear. By drawing everyone into its direct organisation, the state ceases to be itself, and absorbing society into itself, itself dissolves into it without leaving a trace. Class rule over people is transformed into the classless administration of things. This process of the transition to the "administration of things" is conditioned by the fact that the dictatorship of the proletariat includes an absolutely specific relation between economics and politics and a tendency towards the liquidation of classes.

In the capitalist formation elemental and anarchic "civic society " is only embraced by the "political state" and is far from merging with it and organising the main forms of its movement, which in civil society are, private property, private arrangements between capitalist and worker, competition, irrationality, and in state organisation are, the representation of the interests of the capitalist class as a whole, a certain rationality, but a narrow one which does not reach the foundations of "civic society". Under the proletarian dictatorship the state merges more and more with economy. All the chief economic levers are in the hands of the proletarian state. State organisation is also economic organisation. The administration of socialist economy is a direct function of the state in its struggle to overcome class oppositions. So here we have a difference in principle in the relation between "society" and the "state", between "politics" and "economics", between the "administration of people" and the "administration of things". In such conditions the development of productive forces and the victorious course of the class struggle systematically prepare the transition to the swallowing up of the political functions of the state in administrative and economic functions, i.e. the transition to classless and stateless communist society. In this way, therefore, the dictatorship of the proletariat in all its main functions and tendencies of development can in no way march parallel with other types of state power, for, historically understood, it has already gone outside the limits of the state as such. Therefore Kelsen's attempts to refute the oppressive, exploiting character of the capitalist state by the example of proletarian dictatorship which destroys exploitation, are truly pitiful.22) Nor is the author's effort to construct a fatal contradiction between Marx's economic doctrine and his theory of proletarian dictatorship any more successful. Kelsen here advances the following kind of argument: (a) Marx's economic theory which has overcome the economic naïveté of Proudhon and the anarchists, leads to a view of communist economy as a centralised planned system which calls for compulsion, while at the same time a "clearly expressed anarchist ideal" is put forward in the political sphere; (b) there is not and cannot be any administration of things which is not also an administration of persons; (c) the relation of different human groupings to the problems of religion, art and "above all to erotic problems" will not only be shown in different points of view but also in vast conflicts calling for the interference of state power. Against this the following counter-arguments must be advanced: to (a) "stateless" and "anarchist" are only philosophically identical. The "anarchist ideal" in fact rejects centralisation. Stateless centralisation will be possible and historically inevitable, for the growth of productive forces leads to centralisation. The complex co-operation of men is quite conceivable without compulsion (an orchestra). The process of overcoming class oppositions, of "servile hierarchy" (Marx) and of the dying away of the state will create a self-discipline which little by little will not only push out the relics of class compulsion but also of authoritarianism in general. The centralisation of social functions is then only a state when it is given with a class characteristic; to (b) by administration of persons is meant the process of commanding them administratively, that is, of converting them into objects, into simple fulfillers of commands, which presupposes a hierarchy of persons, compulsion, submission. Insofar as these elements disappear the administration of persons in the sense of administrative command over them disappears also. Things also remain as objects, the means of production, the instruments of labour (the doctor does not administer the sick when he gives a prescription, the direction of an orchestra is not administration in the administrative com mand sense of the word); to (c) religion in communist society disappears altogether, for, since it is the reflection of a divided world and the projection into "heaven" of the "earthly" categories of the state, of subjection, it loses any basis for existence. As for "erotic problems" (here we see a little Freudian-Viennese "local colour" in Kelsen), they will certainly not come up for solution in any administrative manner. Indeed to imagine eroticism as a basis for state power in any way at all is to confess oneself completely ignorant of real historical processes.

Marx and Engels also approached the problem of the dying away of the state from the aspect of an analysis of the state as a parasitic growth on the social body. The sharper the class contradictions, the stronger the centrifugal forces splitting the relative unity of society, the larger is the state apparatus (the army, civil service, etc.), the more immense are the non-productive expenses on it, the real faux frais of exploiting social formations. The state is transformed into a force which stands above society, divided off from it, growing disproportionately even from the point of view of its own functions.

This peculiar hypertrophy of the state apparatus and its extreme bureaucratisation,23) this existence over society and those forces standing outside society, these monstrous nonproductive expenses, which arise out of the features of a specific (exploiting) social formation and are multiplied by the growth of. its inner contradictions, are destroyed in the first place, and in this destruction are already to be found the germs of the surmounting of the state.

It is the cri de mode at present to declare the ultimate aim of communism, as treated by Marx, to be an anarchistic ideal. If formerly Marx's virile theory, revolutionary from top to bottom, was put on a level with K. Rodbertus's Prussian landlord socialism and the national-"labour", semi-Bismarckian socialism of F. Lassalle, it is to-day frequently bracketed with the systems of Bismarck, Kropotkin, etc. Marx does in fact speak of anarchy in one place, in declaring that "all socialists understand by anarchy, the ultimate aim of the proletarian movement..."24) But one circumstance fundamentally distinguishes Marx's theory - it is a scientific theory. It tackles all problems from the point of view of development, of history, and not abstractly. So with Marx it is a question of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a transitional historical phase of development to communism and of different stages of the movement of society towards a stateless communist commune. This stateless (anarchic in this sense) society differs however in the highest degree from the federation of small communes of semi-handicraft character which anarchism has in mind and whose social genesis is very far from the deeply fundamental sections of the industrial proletariat. Marxism, on the other hand, has nothing in common with its pitiful social-fascist caricature which goes back ideologically to Lassalle, growing with all its shoots into the ideology of the fascist "national", "caste" and "corporative" state, with the proletariat completely enslaved to capital and its terrorist dictatorship, offered up under the pseudonym of the "nation" and the "whole", with an enormous number of various "simulacra" (the demagogic aspect of fascism) and "arcana dominationis".

The dictatorship of the proletariat as the autocracy of the working-class is simultaneously an inner class proletarian democracy, in opposition to bourgeois democracy, which, founded on capitalist property, exploitation and, consequently, on deep economic inequality, creates a whole system of democratic simulacra, i.e. of deceptive and disguised institutions of a formal juridical equality for all. Really this is a fiction, for economic inequality makes formal legal equality unrealisable. But the reality of these fictions is in their preventive and disguised functions which are very real. Even in the most democratic systems, which to-day largely belong to the historic past, the inner mechanism of state power fully guarantees the autocracy, i.e. the dictatorship, of the bourgeoisie, which has been analysed even by certain bourgeois authorities on the state, such as R. Michels,25) Ostrogorsky26) and others. The mechanism of parties, of small "cabinets", "caucuses" (in the U.S.A.), of "higher instances" behind the scenes, with the whole system of "arcana imperil", is the real machine, which, despite its determining importance and rôle in actual life, plays a very small part in its quality of object for the bourgeois theory of state law which analyses the system of numerous simulacra in the first place from the formally juridical point of view. The dictatorship of the proletariat has no need of such a system of fictions. It openly declares its class character and its functions which find expression in the consciousness of bourgeois political scientists as a recognition of the anti-democratic (but not anti-bourgeois, not proletarian democratic) character of proletarian dictatorship.

The dictatorship of the proletariat [declares, for instance, Hans Gmelin,]27) is a form of government (Regierunsform), according to which state power, in opposition to democracy, should not proceed from the whole people, but only from the classes which live by manual labour. Although the popular masses participating in state power are very numerous, nevertheless the dictatorship of the proletariat must be put on a level with aristocracies and oligarchies, since here also it is a question of the rôle of one class.

Marx exposed the real meaning of the theory of the "popular", "free" state, which is defended by vulgar democracy, in a merciless scientific analysis. On the other hand, the dictatorship of the proletariat, since it is the autocracy of the proletariat, really guarantees democracy to it, educating and refashioning both the proletariat itself, and its allies, for it "expropriates the expropriators "and builds socialism, raises the material and cultural level of life of the toilers by continually developing all their inner forces and potentialities and bringing nearer the destruction of the gap between mental and physical labour.28) It is only here that the "people" which in Plato's aristocratic state was treated as δηςίου ποιχίλου καί πολυχεφαλου (a motley and many-headed beast) shows itself, in the course of its historical refashioning, as the real creator and organiser of the new society which marks the transition "from the pre-history of man to his real history". With Marx, therefore, (1) there is a peculiar dialectic of dictatorship and democracy; (2) democracy itself is not treated in its extrahistorical abstraction whereby it is reduced to nothing, but in its historical, concrete, class particular form, which (3) in its turn is analysed from the point of view of the historical change in the means of production and the types of state power. Thus the dictatorship of the proletariat is a new, higher type of democracy, and is, moreover, such a type as by developing, finally destroys any kind of state power, that is to say, negates itself.

Dictatorship in general, and the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular, besides the autocracy of a class, implies a special factor of disconnection even in its own laws. In accordance with the "dictates of the moment" it lays down what must be the suitable actions from the standpoint of its tasks. It decides, above all.29) This bareness of function, and heightened "freedom of action", this twofold purpose, are particularly characteristic of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which comes forward with the visor of history thrown open. Bringing the whole administration of "national economy" into its apparatus, enriching and varying to the greatest possible extent its tasks, placing itself on a foundation of socialist economy of ever-increasing planned character, the dictatorship of the proletariat rationalises to the highest degree the vital process of society as a whole. The class struggle of the proletariat organised as the state power assumes a variety of forms, impregnating every sphere of social life, from technique to philosophy. This process of the transformation of society from a fractional-elemental condition into a rationalised and organised one, this conversion of subjectless society into society the subject, fundamentally changes the very type of law of social development. The relation between the causal and teleological sequence is changed. This does not mean that objective law and the objective laws of development disappear. But it does mean that they lose their character of a blind external force standing above man and opposing his actions. Developed communism is the conditional limit of development, on the law of which Marx wrote as follows:

Just as the savage must wrestle with nature, in order to satisfy his wants, in order to maintain his life and reproduce it, so civilised man has to do it, and he must do it in all forms of society and under all possible modes of production. With his development the realm of natural necessity expands, because his wants increase; but at the same time the forces of production increase, by which these wants are satisfied. The freedom in this field cannot consist of anything else but of the fact that socialised man, the associated producers, regulate their interchange with nature rationally, bring it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by some blind power; that they accomplish their task with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most adequate to their human nature and most worthy of it. But it always remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human power, which is its own end, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can flourish only upon that realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working day is its fundamental premise.... In fact, the realm of freedom does not commence until the point is passed where labour under the compulsion of necessity and of external utility is required. In the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of material production in the strict meaning of the term.30)

In other words the transition from capitalism to socialism is far from implying entry into the realm of pure chance or of pure "free will" on a social scale (indeterminism). It is far from implying the liquidation of the category of necessity, i.e. of objective law, which remains. The development of material production will always be subject to objective laws, like everything else on earth. But the destruction of anarchy in production and of irrationality in the productive process, i.e. the organisation of socialist production, its planned nature, its rational character ("general control")destroy the form of "blind" law, of law as a "blind force" ruling over men, external to them. Consequently, necessity here appears as freedom (" Freedom is the recognition of necessity"),the causal connection finds its direct teleological expression, ever more and more coinciding in its "volume". So, for example, in the economic plan, which is a system of lines of action (a system of standards, a teleological system), this causal necessity finds its direct expression. If we renounce "necessity"and "objective law" altogether, there instead of Marxism we get pure subjectivism and voluntarism. If we renounce the destruction of the "blindness" in law, the new interrelation between the causal and teleological sequence, then we get a mechanical transplantation of the categories of capitalism into socialism, that is to say, a bourgeois, liberal caricature of Marxism, utterly anti-dialectical, anti-historical. Therefore in the economic sphere, the product under socialism: ceases to be a commodity, the category of value ceases to exist, the blind "law of value" is destroyed, but there remains, in another relationship, of course (both qualitative and quantitative), the necessity of the distribution of social labour according to the, different spheres of social production. The plan, therefore, has its objective basis. In becoming more and more a scientific plan, it is more and more the expression of recognised necessity, which is freedom. But science itself would be objectless if there were no objective laws, since science has as its object precisely their analysis and theoretical expression, which becomes a direct instrument of practical action.

As we have seen, the state can be treated as an apparatus of state power and as society in its state form, i.e. with the inclusion and exclusion of the object of its action. The latter treatment can be applied particularly in regard to the dictatorship of the, proletariat because (a) the dictatorship of the proletariat does not' stand above society; (b) because economics here merge with ' politics; (c) politics (including economics) are rapidly objectivised on an immense scale as a current of the social and historical (and in the first place economic) process. Therefore the phases of development of the dictatorship of the proletariat are the phases of development of society as a whole towards communism through the class struggle.

The dictatorship of the proletariat, which includes elements of direct class struggle, both bloody and bloodless; of struggle and leadership over its allies, of the refashioning of technique, economy, people and their consciousness; their education, organisation, etc., means in the sphere of economics a constant growth of socialist, planned economy. From the point of view of relations between industry and agriculture it forces on the process of overcoming the opposition between town and country, the destruction of "the stupidity of village life", the outliving of property relations on the land. The development of the forces of production, emancipated by the revolution, which inevitably multiplies the technical and economic power of industry, cannot be reconciled with the backward form of production relationships in agriculture, a form which chemically isolates ever newer and newer elements of capitalism. It therefore holds up the whole development, since expanded industry creates such a demand for agricultural production as can be satisfied only by decisive changes in agriculture. Marx expressed this in an unusually sharp form in his letter to Engels of the 14th August, 1852: "The more I busy myself with this muck (he is referring to Proudhon. N.B.), the more I am convinced that a reform in agriculture, and consequently in the property abomination founded on it, is the alpha and omega of the coming revolution. Without it father Malthus will be right." 31)

The first phase of communism, which still bears the "birth marks" of the old society, is characterised by: (a) an incomplete development of productive forces; (b) the non-destruction as yet of the division between physical and mental labour; (c) distribution, not according to need but according to labour (which is inevitable at the given stage of development of productive forces); (d) the preservation of the relics of bourgeois law (an equal share of the product for an equal quantity of labour when there is inequality of ability and strength is an expression of inequality); (e) relics of hierarchy, subjection, the state. The higher phase of communist society which arises historically on the basis of the further growth of productive forces, goes outsid these limits.

In the higher phase of communist society, after the tyrannical; subordination of individuals, according to the division of labour, and and thereby also the distinction between mental and physical labour, has disappeared, after labour has become not merely a means to live but is in itself the first necessity of living, after the forces of production have also increased and all the springs of co-operative wealth are flowing more freely together with the all-round development of the individual, then and then only can the narrow bourgeois horizon of rights be left far behind and society will inscribe on its banner - "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."32)

The higher phase of communism is thus characterised by: (a) an exceptionally large development of the forces of production; (b) a vital and creative, absolutely free form of labour; (c) the destruction of the division of labour, i.e. of the eternal, "professions" and in particular of the opposition between mental, and physical labour; (d) the disappearance of all relics of class; division, of "servile hierarchy" (Marx), of subjection; (e) distribution according to needs as every kind of deficiency in products so far as needs are concerned passes away; (f) the destruction, (dying away) of the last relics of law and the state.

The deepest distinction between the Marxian statement of the problem and that of "all systems of the future" lies in its scientific and historical approach, in its analysis of the real tendencies of objective historical dialectics. With Marx there is no question, of any "scheme" of a rationally constructed "ideal society". He has a very stern attitude towards those splendid fantasies and sentimental ideologies which are fabricated out of illusory images." In discovering the laws of motion of capitalist society, Marx made vast historical forecasts, scientific forecasts, he foretold the inevitable doom of capitalism and the dictatorship of the proletariat on the basis of his analysis of the tendencies of capitalist development, and having given on this ground the chief features of the coming epoch, he sketched its inevitable stages of development, its fundamental forms in their historical tendency. There can therefore be nothing more commonplace than Sombart's definition that "socialism is practical social rationalism with anti-chrematistic tendencies", with its following subdivision into two further "chief groups" of socialism:

(1) Organic, morphological, tectonic, concrete, graphic, hierarchical, national, state socialism, whose representatives... are Plato, Campanella, Fichte, Saint-Simon, Rodbertus, and to a certain degree Fourier and Weitling also;

(2) Mechanical, amorphous, commonplace, abstract, invented, equalitarian, international, social socialism... to which in the first place Marx's socialism belongs.33)

The general definition of socialism given here is not only narrow but also wretchedly untrue, since it has nothing to say about the destruction of the process of exploitation, classes, etc. The demarcation into two groups does bring in certain real elements (state and socialised, nationalism and internationalism, etc.), but it mixes up absolutely different kinds of things and in important features is only a vulgar caricature of Marxism. The main point-historical dialectic-is omitted here. The distinction possessed by Marxist scientific communism as against all the "systems" of Utopian socialism, here disappears. Sombart "does not need" to understand the scientific forecast made by Marx, a forecast upon which the practice of the communist movement is based. Herr Kelsen, on the other hand, supposes socialism to be a "political theory", i.e. a system of standards put forward on a basis of "ethical and political postulates", whilst Marxism "being a political theory, assumes a mask of 'scientific and causal investigation'", and that is all.34) There is not, in all such "critical" arguments, a grain of comprehension of the dialectic of causality and teleology, of necessity and freedom, of theory and practice, etc. "Ethical" socialism is unproved, since there are various "ethical systems", various standards of behaviour, various aims and orientations each with a sharply defined class character. Here, being has completely determined consciousness, and to "prove", for example, the "desirability" of socialism from the point of view of the capitalist is stupid. However, a scientific analysis of capitalist society gives results which run in the same direction as the main orientation of the proletariat. This in turn is explained by the objective situation of the proletariat in capitalist society. But it is just this circumstance which makes theoretical analysis a weapon of practical activity, which in the communist movement blends theory with practice, converting this practice into scientific practice. From this point of view the party of scientific communism is the only party at all able to practise scientific politics, and thanks to this circumstance the birth-pangs of a new, socialist society are curtailed. The class movement of the proletariat obtains an absolutely exceptional theoretical backing. The theory of scientific communism which is the highest product of the self-consciousness of the proletariat, raises it to a level on which it recognises its historical rôle as a whole, as a subversive revolutionary force and creator of a new society, the organiser of the proletarian dictatorship, which liquidates itself by transformation into classless communist society.

If we now take Marx's theory as a whole, the vast edifice which begins with the theory of knowledge, the general laws of materialist dialectic, and ends with the doctrine of the transition period to communism, then it is not difficult to come to the conclusion that the world has never known such a scientific philosophical synthesis. The professional savants of the bourgeoisie who have now lost their heads at the thunder of the avalanches of history, have made many assaults on Marx, thinking to damage the practical side of his universal activity by carving this giant of genius into a learned man on the one hand and a revolutionary on the other. But in this they have simply shown the poverty and limitations of doctrinaires.

Marx showed by his whole life and activity that he was a great man of learning precisely because he was a great revolutionary. And he was a great revolutionary because he was a a great man of learning. His whole monumental theory is verified by unprecedented historical practice. The practical criterion of truth and correspondence with reality in regard to this virile, compact, grand theory, is applied on the scale of a world. revolution. What teaching, what conception, what doctrine; what "guide to action" ever knew such quantities, such qualities? Marx has given us an all-powerful weapon. This universal genius who has built up a creative synthesis of all the conquests of thought has also given us an unprecedented synthesis of theory and practice. And if the creator of dialectical materialism, of the materialist conception of history, the creator of the Communist Manifesto and of Capital was also the organiser and leader of the First International, a leader and sage, a first-class strategist and tactician of revolutionary struggle, then his doctrine, enriched and developed by his glorious successors, is also a weapon of revolution, of the destruction of the old and the building of the new.

After the death of Marx, who saw only the first germs of monopolist capitalism, these germs grew, creating a whole new stage in the development of capital, its last, imperialist stage. It brought all the contradictions of capitalism to an extreme point. The most catastrophic epoch of all began, the epoch of imperialist wars and proletarian revolutions. This epoch caused a further development and inner enrichment of Marxism, its conversion into Marxism-Leninism. Lenin, on the basis of a great scientific work, of the experience of great historical events, on the basis of the practice of the revolutionary movement and of immense class battles, on the basis of the proletarian revolution in Russia and of mass movements in the home countries and colonies of all lands, created a new stage in the theory of Marxism. His teachings on imperialism, on the dictatorship of the proletariat and Soviet power as its form, on the allies of the proletariat (the peasantry in the first place) and the hegemony of the proletariat, on the rôle of the party, on the national question, the colonies, etc., were given such a high theoretical refashioning and brought out so much that was new, as to carry forward the whole theory of Marx. Revolutionary Marxism is to-day only Marxism-Leninism. After Lenin's death the part of theoretical and practical leader fell to Stalin. Stalin, on the basis of an experience of socialist construction unprecedented in scale, of the industrialisation of and immense revolution in agriculture, together with the "destruction of the property monstrosity" in land, on the basis of a sharp class struggle against the relics of the capitalist classes, made a whole series of fresh theoretical generalisations which are to-day a force directing the complex practical work of the party. Marx's doctrine has grown in both its content and its rôle in history. Millions follow this teaching which will live and develop along with the forward movement of the victorious fighting armies of the proletariat. In the struggle against the fascist barbarians, who cast a dark and bloody shadow over the world of culture, in the struggle against the falsifiers of Marxism, in the struggle against degenerate and treacherous social-democracy, the Communist International and its advance guard, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the centre of Marxist thought and Marxist practice, leads the masses to the world dictatorship of the proletariat and the fraternal world Commune of classless humanity.

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toongrrl-blog · 3 years

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Bridget Jones: In Company with Beckys and Karens

We can start with unpacking your luggage Bridget, you are gonna need the help but pull your weight into it.

Hi Bridget, looking good as always. Long time, huh? I guess it has been awkward after I have given your husband Mark a beat down and sent roses to his first ex-wife and your ex supervisor Perpetua. I think it’s time we talk. I understand life hasn’t been easy for you: your mother is nutty and a misogynistic racist, your father is friends with pervs and found it astounding you had a real boyfriend (Colin Jones won’t escape my ire), your friends are trash frankly especially the smug marrieds, you are insecure over a body that actually isn’t really a outlier to the dominant white patriarchal standard of cis female beauty (by the way, have you heard butt implants exist now?), your jerk husband is very negging and in the original novel he “compliments” you by pulling “Not like other girls” on you and all your other boyfriends see you as a piece of ass and don’t respect you, your uncle gropes your ass for how long and his wife pesters you about your body and past singleness.

But let’s be real Bridget: those wilderness years where you feared becoming a sad spinster were endured in a spacious apartment where your bedroom was separate from the kitchen AND the living room without a roommate (hope I get this lucky), you haven’t wanted for nothing growing up in a affluent and safe town in a single-income family (your dad was also a accountant), you were given blonde hair and blue eyes (traits that have been considered desirable for multiple millenniums), your body was always curvier than you’d like but you had no problem finding a lot of clothes in your size and didn’t have a doctor fat shame you (now smoking and drinking...), I learned from Jameela Jamil that actually Britain of your teens and twenties was a racist time, you got to go to college (granted it was in the University of Wales, which wasn’t “prestigious” enough for Daniel Cleaver) and you got a stable office job at a publishing company that you often fudged (most WOC can’t fuck up like you and thrive in this culture), and you never been in most situations where you didn’t have to look in the media or in the room and find yourself out of place.

Well now it’s 2020, have you heard of Black Lives Matter? This shitstorm of a year has been forcing us to confront issues regarding the patriarchy, capitalism, white supremacy, putting people of privilege to question their own involvement in prejudice, and a highly militarized law enforcement. Has Mark spoke of this to you? I haven’t heard a peep from you and Helen Fielding. I must say, I was glad not to hear either you or Helen say anything transphobic (fuck off JK Rowling). I think you heard of these memes going around called “the Karen” and “the Becky”, you must be wondering what the difference between the two are and was at a loss to counsel your smug married friends or your racist ass mother crying over being called Karens. Here is the trouble, I think you are likely a Becky and have the potential to turn into a Karen, after all you dream of weaponizing your mother’s embarrassing casual racism and thin privilege against Perpetua and Mark Darcy, and you dabbled in the White Savior trope for a hot minute in Thailand (oh and playing an idealized Ivanka Trump to your mother in the 3rd film?). Also let’s face it, you are compared to every confident, capable woman in your universe (surprise they are all bitches) or the non-Anglo British or non-British conquests of Daniel or Mark’s ex wife.

Let’s talk about the traits of a Karen and Becky and how they are related, Bridget.

Karen

Ah the Karen, or as Tv Tropes called her the “Obnoxious Entitled Housewife”.

Here is a bullet point of traits the Karen possesses according to The Take:

She’s an entitled, middle-aged, upper or middle class, often White woman.

She mistreats those “beneath her” like wait staff and customer service, classism at it’s most in-your-face and irritating.

She follows the rules, except the part about expired coupons.

She sticks to the hierarchy, using it to prop herself up.

Often passive-aggressive and judgmental.

She puts up the image of the perfect fragile woman, even if she instigated a crime.

Narcissistic behavior.

She considers herself the policewoman of human behavior.

She often lacks a understanding of different races and classes.

She projects her own misery on those who cannot fight back against her.

She is often a Know Nothing Know It All.

This probably hits home Bridget, they describe your mother, Auntie Una, and smug married friends. When you look at the news from my country, you tell yourself every time they wonder about your marital status or when you will have children, you are likely keeping them from calling the police on a black kid selling cups of water. But Karen is merely the more outwardly mature version of a trope you definitely fit and her name is....

Becky

Hey Bridget, your hair may not be as shiny as you like but according to a White Supremacist structure, you have “good hair”. You dealt with your literal Beckys Bridget (hi book version Rebecca Gillies), but what “Becky” refers to is to a often ditzy, somewhat entitled, young, white woman who lacks real racial understanding. It refers to how our society props up an image of idealized white femininity, sometimes it bleeds into women not considered “ideal” themselves.

By the way, the redhead featured is Joan Holloway. She isn’t ditzy like a Becky but her Queen Bee behaviors, her reliance on her pretty privilege, lack of racial understanding, and her adherence to femininity and social climbing make her a modern-day Becky Sharp (also an earlier Becky).

Remember when you contemplated introducing Mark as “a middle-aged prick who was lefty by his cruel raced ex-wife”? Wasn’t that kind of racist of your Bridget? Not so different from your mother? Here are a few traits:

Becky can be oblivious to her surroundings (and the feelings of others less advantaged than she).

She usually gets away with trouble due to her idealized Anglo looks.

Willfully naïve.

Conventionally feminine.

Often spoiled.

She and her interests are basic and mainstream (sounds like milk tray, Colin Firth binge fests, shopping, numerous garden parties).

She is often cushioned against disappointment (in the 3rd film we were all supposed to be on your side while your bitchy boss fired you for very good reasons).

Unaware of other’s needs because she is so used to things going her way.

Her ignorance can be just as frustrating and harmful as a Karen’s maliciousness.

Becky is given real growth in fiction, to learn to be better.

The thing is Bridget....where is your character development? It seems you hardly achieve much confidence, intellect, or maturity. In the 3rd film, I was shocked you were in your forties, I thought I was looking at a overgrown teenager. Perhaps you are a victim of Flanderization?

Karen and Becky

Now we look at how bad things could get if you don’t check your privilege soon enough Bridget, yes a lot of Beckys run the risk of becoming Karens. This is Mother-Daughter pair, Nancy (daughter) and Karen (Mother) Wheeler, I put them because of the connection but they don’t fit the stereotype (despite one of them having the name) but they are privileged white women talking about their shared experiences with misogyny. And most Beckys and Karens had to deal with misogyny, both outside and internalized, the issue being they don’t see how other people had to suffer due to prejudice.

Now Bridget, with your mother, you are a Becky while she was always a Karen. That is you are ignorant about your white privilege while your mother runs on casual racism, ignorance, and Tory politics. Ask her or Mark about the race riots, ask her and Mark about Enoch Powell. And yes Julie Bindel, a fellow compatriot of yours, complained about the Karen label but honestly it’s scary about how some of your peers chortled over racist jokes or your mother’s antics but get up in arms when people of color in service jobs call ya’ll out. But there are some Karen traits you show already, you will weaponize your place in the pecking order to beat down on another woman, like with Perpetua and Mark’s first ex-wife.

What does this say about you?

I will be the first to admit, I would’ve jumped up and cheered if I woke up in your body. You are conventionally prettier, but lately I recognized my own points and one of them is flair and the ability to read folks. Believe it or not Bridget, you are seen as a role model and a relatable figure to folks (and your last film ran on Millennial bashing, hating on younger women is not a good look). Maybe these Zoomer teens were on to something? Bridge, they will save us, we need to do the work.

Now maybe you can take a cue from Dr. Rawlings on how to support and critique women Bridget? In the meantime, I think if I run into you, I’ll run if I see your mother.

Not all is lost, I see you are a reader, maybe put down the self-help books and do some self-improvement by learning how to be a better white ally. I would like to read Hood Feminism (Mikki Kendall is a delight on Twitter). Meanwhile, if you do release a 4th movie in the future: don’t release it during a U.S. election year (I have had enough right wing presidents to last my teens and twenties).

#Bridget Jones #Bridget Jones's Diary #Karens #Karen #Becky #Beckys #white women #White Privilege #racist patriarchy #Casual Racism #Women in Media #character analysis #your fave is problematic #character intervention

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butterfly-winx · 4 years

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Eraklyon

Eraklyon is known for its riches, political intrigue and peculiar standing in the magical society. The lavish lifestyle of its inhabitants is supported by the ores and minerals hidden in the crust beneath the country, that has caused many an envious eye to be thrown at it.

Eraklyon is located on Manubra 47, a mid sized planet they share with 27 other countries spread over the continents divided from each other by unique freshwater oceans. Two of their most prominent neighbours are Nishii and the island country Callisto.

Eraklyon, like Magics has the means to supply basic amenities to its inhabitants free of charge, though on Eraklyon they do mean the barest necessities: shelter and water. Nevertheless those two taken care of the general stress level about self-sustenance among the low economical classes is staggeringly low compared to other countries of the Magical Universe.

Just like on Solaria, the favourite trade products are gems and minerals that they gladly share with their more famous business partner. A lot of jewellery is is made on Solaria, but mined in Eraklyon. Though semi- and precious stones may be what they are most know for, their other mining products such as oil and carbon gases is what gets them into tension with their neighbouring countries.

As nice as a life in such a well-off stable society sounds like, Eraklyon has never been the object of envy for most people who know what lies beyond the exterior. The country is almost always locked in war with one or the other bordering region in a never ending conflict over territories and mining rights on ground and on the colony planetoids. Borders have shifted considerably over the centuries, the people being displaced adopting a bi-lingual and bi-cultural lifestyle fluent in both Rak (the language of Eraklyon) and the other language of their residence. The instability this introduces had many people flee overseas to Callisto, or straight up just as far away as possible, onto another planet.

The war at current times is tame. It has morphed, and had to because of the massive causalities it has reaped in the past. Neither Eraklyon, nor Nishii, the two main perpetrators in the fight, are technologically underdeveloped. They had the means to employ weapons of mass destruction against each other and not too long, only two centuries ago they did, nuking most of the people and inhabitable zones of the planet. Magic may not be able to solve all problems, but with the use of the nature core most life was salvaged, the only evidence of it ever happening a scar on the surface that is slowly being filled by the seas. It was a grim reminder to the ruling class, that at the end of they are nothing without the people they are sworn to lead, serve and protect. The very ways of warfare had to be rewritten.

At this point, no one on Manubra 47 is allowed to hold an army at steady whose sole purpose is to lead wars. Military and its deployment are only permitted when the purpose serves the well-being of all people of the country, say an outside invasion or criminal activity, but never for the personal interest of the ruling classes. They are permitted personal protection units, but even those are limited in size. So the tension moved, the stress of being a casualty moved from the people’s shoulders with the war being solely confined to the royals and rulers themselves.

What began there is known as the Bello Sicarii, the personal war of assassinations, hits and extortion among the members of the royalty. This experience is what shaped Sky’s life growing up and necessitated employing Brandon as a body double for most of his life. It is not rare that it happens, because of the specific rules that further define the Bello Sicarii. In the first years, hits had an extremely high success rate, neither party really used to the new rules and the implemented security measures were lacking, leading to a much too frequent change of regents. That left countries destabilised and at the brink of another civil crisis that neither party on Manubra could afford.

The new postulations drafted specified, that in order to retain a ruler for as long as possible, adults would be largely spared but their progeny would not. Children before reaching adulthood were fair game, as interrupting the succession line of a ruler carried almost as much weight as an assassination itself. After an heir has reached adulthood, matters would get much more complicated with the young royal being able to sign contracts, make diplomatic agreements and get entangled in business relations, as to such that their “removal” would have significant consequences for the planetary peace and economy. This is something frankly normal to Sky, but he is sweating up a storm thinking if he had to ever explain that to Bloom in the event that they got married and were thinking of having children. (This is also the reason why Bloom’s impersonation of Princess Varanda of Callisto passed for so long, since Varanda has truly never left the protective hideout she had been brought up in and no one off planet has ever seen her.)

Religion on Eraklyon is a double edged sword. Their main belief is a strong doctrine that aims to lead people down a very predestined, rigid path of moral righteousness. In doing so, painting one lifestyle as supremely right, it has the tendency to demonise anything else that deviates from it. Especially magic.

Eraklyon, like Earth, operates a split society where non-magic people and magic users and creatures live in almost separate societies with a hierarchy of their own. While non-magic Eraklyonites know of the existence of magic and do use it in certain amounts, they fear it more than they appreciate it. Especially witchcraft, which has become a notorious example of why magic is bad in the eyes of religious people. In ancient times witch covens liberally offered trade and magical problem solving to those who were willing to pay a certain price for it. It snowballed into a sort of worship that angered the rising power of religious folk, who protested this kind of exchange because of the missing toil in the magical solutions. In their eyes there was no moral lesson, no growth in allowing oneself to rely on spells and magic alone, so they despised the the craft so much that witches entirely left the planet at some point.

The religious doctrine permeates almost everything concerning social life. The rigidity of it demands clearly defined social classes that are largely kept separate, like castes. Elevating oneself is of course possible, so the spiritual leaders say, if only one behaves according to the path of the right. Otherwise every misfortune that happens to one is justly brought upon punishment. This idea is by the way remarkably at odds with the motto of the country that states, Imbalance is paramount for progress, as it keeps social mobility at stagnation.

Imbalance and asymmetry are also beloved design elements that set Eraklyonites apart from other cultures off planet. They are not as avant-garde as people from Zenith, but favouring rich hand-woven fabric, brocades, taffeta and silhouettes that remind of 19th century Earth fashion. No two sides of a building, dress, or haircut are the same but the overall picture is never off kilter, both sides of the design packing incredibly high detail density. For this reason clothing is still hand-crafted and is not a mass market product like in other countries or planets.

One happy thing though that everyone will be able to tell you about Eraklyon, is that they celebrate a lot. They have 18 religious and commemorative days that are bank holidays, but on top of that they also value birthdays very much. Every person automatically receives the day off on their day of birth and may request other ones off for those of their immediate family - meaning spouse, sibling, children, parents, even up to grandparents. Job applications in Eraklyon typically start with a big wall of birth dates requested to give the employer an idea of when one might not be available to work. For seasonal work, people are preferred whose family doesn’t have predominantly summer birthdays, just to make sure harvesting is done on time without Celebration Delays, as they call that.

Eraklyon is a core member of the Company of Light. Being constantly at war gave them the advantage of having armies at the ready to be deployed to protect people from the Ancestresses attacks, plus their experience in battle strategies has come handy more than once, latest in the fight against Tritannus. The people of Eraklyon are a proud people, infused with blind love and trust in their homeland despite its shortcomings. However, they offer the same fierce love and loyalty to all the people close to their hearts.

#butterfly fic #eraklyon #eraklion #worldbuilding #I think I am going to make a separate post on the magic community on eraklyon -and diaspro by extension- on a separate post

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whitehotharlots · 4 years

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This is not going to be the end of MeToo

A dream is floating around the heads of Dirtbag Leftists. A beautiful, wonderful dream… A Biden nomination, and especially a Biden presidency, has shown the MeToo movement for what it really is: a collection of amoral careerists cynically, arbitrarily exploiting sexual assault claims to raise their own professional status and settle personal scores. The movement is ideologically bankrupt, monstrously hypocritical, and utterly unconcerned with helping vulnerable people. Everyone paying attention must now admit to this, and, once admitted to, the hags and scolds will no longer wield so much power, and will lose their ability to wreck actual leftist movements with specious accusations regarding finger wags and epigenetic trauma.

Oh lord, how lovely this would be.

Take this quote from Felix Biederman of Chapo Trap House, who says that a Biden presidency

would eviscerate the liberal media identity politics industrial complex. Because Biden-World has no use for those people. Like, Democrats just spent a week going “Don’t call it the Chinese virus.” Then Joe comes out there and he’s like “we’re gonna send them back, Jack.” [ . . . ] Someone was saying this entire primary was a referendum against Bernie and his ideas, (and depending on how much of a fucking loser you are [a referendum] on a podcast you don’t like). If that’s true, isn’t also true that this is a referendum on everything the liberal media has lectured everyone about since 2014? Doesn’t this prove that no one cares about that shit? Biden’s a complete refutation of all of that.

Biederman is one of the funniest and most astute political observers of our time. His observations here are correct from a moral standpoint. He is also correct from a “describing reality” standpoint. But he is not taking into account the degree that MeToo is and has always been propelled by cynical careerism.

The general consensus is that the arbitrary weaponization of MeToo is now so plainly obvious that anyone sharper than, say, Sady Doyle must recognize that and will have to account for it. For this to happen, however, we have to assume the MeToo’s purveyors are at all concerned with not coming across as amoral hypocrites. And let me tell you—I know a lot of these people, I have sat with them in classes, I have gone to their conferences, I am deeply immersed in their culture. They have no capacity for shame and even less for self-awareness. They don’t care if the entire world thinks them to be hypocrites—if anything, the scorn of outsiders only increases their self-certainty.

This has all been obvious since day one, and not just to cranks like myself. Call it the Law of Zero Tolerance: the more draconian a policy is, the more arbitrarily it’s going to be enforced. More conscientious writers are now insisting that MeToo has always been a humble call for authorities to be less skeptical toward sexual assault accusations, and for men on the whole to be more aware of how their behaviors can harm women. This is very reasonable-seeming. It’s also absolutely not how MeToo was handled. The hashtag was #BelieveWomen. It wasn’t #BeLessSkeptical. The formal line—stated explicitly, as clear as could be—is that men needed to be punished, that false or incorrect accusations were absolutely fine, that any and all allegations were abject and absolute proof of guilt, and that no matter how implausible or trivial or even physically impossible an accusation was, the accused always—always—deserved punishment.

Such a terrifying dynamic obviously could not be fully enforced—society would collapse. It has instead only gained traction in arenas that were already relatively equalitarian and liberal-minded: education, academe, media, and left-liberal politics. It was not intended to make these spaces more equitable; it was instead a means for women of gaining leverage within these spaces. That’s it. And because it’s always solely been an attempt to shift power dynamics, criticism has always been met with vicious resistance. As I’ve said: lots and lots of people have been aware of the movement’s cynicism since the beginning. Men and women have talked to me in private about it for over a half decade now. But they keep their mouths shut in public spaces because they realize that every neurotic shitty woman around them has now been gifted the power of the creepy kid from the old Twlight Zone episode who could wish bad people into the corn field. All they have to do is declare you a very bad man (or a very bad ally) and that’s it, your career is fucked.

No matter how mild, respectful, or thorough a person’s criticism may be, uttering a single word against MeToo renders one persona non grata within liberal spaces. Trust me, plenty of people have wanted to push back, but they kept their mouths shut because they valued their jobs. More people will want to push back now, probably, but the dynamic is still in place: shitheads have a new means of achieving power and prominence, and now that they’ve achieved success they have no reasons to suddenly start being decent.

Our society is designed to reward cynical liars. The less principles you have, the more shameless you are, the easier it is for you to succeed. The shitheads who have floated to the top of the MeToo heap are now even more insulated from scrutiny than they were before. And, trust me, none of them are going to give up a hint of power. They’re not gonna admit they were wrong or dishonest, that’s for damn sure. Instead, as the stakes have gotten higher and the landscape is growing even more austere, they’re going to double down. Bad faith will rule us all until the final collapse hits.

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chiropteran-hellfire · 4 years

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Memories of Rebellion

I don’t often type my thoughts here, for many a reason. I’m rather private in working through my recollections and my followers I’m aware are most likely fans rather than following me for fictionkin related reasons.

However, if one is interested in listening to my vaguely confused ramblings about the Demon World’s politics, feel free to continue reading.

Recent events in this world have been reminding me with increasing severity glimmers of memories that I’ve had for years, but as I had nothing more to base it on dismissed them (as is often the case). I have many concepts arise in my mind, and picking through intrusive thoughts, imaginative wanderings and simple desire is an often delicate and slow process.

But the protests across the world currently have brought these memories back once again. This is not the first time, for I’ve had it for years previously, so I can at least rule out my mind simply introjecting current affairs into my perception of my past. But I know at some point the ‘Crow Clan’ was attempting to demand better recognition amongst vampires.

I’ve yet to figure out where I saw it, but it was on written paper. It may have been a newspaper, a private sent message via familiar or even on papers at some sort of strategy meeting. It’s still all incredibly vague, and I find it frustrating being unable to pin this down, which in part prompted me to type this out.

I know they were unhappy with their role in society, and they had been becoming more difficult to control over time. Rebellions in the past had often been quickly quashed, but it was starting to become more noticeable, causing a chain reaction of spreading to other pockets of ghouls and instilling more ideas of uprising among them as well. The ‘Crow Clan’ seemed to be more of a band of those who wanted recognition as equals, as they turned their original name of crows from one to mean servitude to one that encouraged rebellion.

I do not recall perfectly, as either they had no clan symbol before simply due to lacking that authority or they had one that was assigned to them as a form of ‘branding’. In either case, before they started demanding more recognition their symbol was barely ever seen by most vampires... or seen as worth paying attention to.

This new design was of a crow from the side, wings spread and head curled with an open beak as it’s feet were stretched out beneath it, grasping their choice of weapon - a polearm. I believe it was quite roughly painted with dry large brushstrokes in contrast to our more clean designs, but I’m not able to recreate that currently, so this is an attempt of what I do recall:

I was never particularly involved with ghouls myself directly. Ghouls were usually servants to the casual vampire civilian rather than for our family, we had familiars and other vampires work for us instead. But I can imagine that part of my role as the acting head of my family was to send a message to control the riots.

I’m currently unable to recall what action I took, though It’s quite likely I did reinstate threats of retaliation should they not behave via written statement. It would have been expected of me to and have reflected poorly on us not to make some sort of gesture, so running off of logical assumption it would be a fair guess to make. It would have been more of a political statement than any sort of actual genuine involvement on my behalf. I wasn’t involved in the trade myself, though I did attempt to at least have base understandings in most fields if I was to ready myself for the idea of running it one day. A future that never occurred, unfortunately. I’d also like to clarify, as I’ve had these memories since before reading Lost Eden, and have only read my own route from there, I’m unsure if any of this matches up to another’s timeline. It is however on my to-do list to check through at some point, but feel free to inform me if you believe any of this matches up to one in particular so I may refine my search.

Disclaimer: It shouldn’t need to be clarified but as I don’t trust the minds of humans I feel the disclaimer is required that even if I did attempt to enforce the class divide amongst demon kind within DL, in human form now it’s clearly more advantageous to work towards equality across all classes. I’m rather more exposed to an over abundance of empathy now in human form which I never had before. So it is best not to attempt to force human morals on demons, we simply have different physiology.

#Personal #Memories #Fictionkin #Text #Past

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justforbooks · 4 years

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The End of Communism in Russia Meant the End of Democracy in the West

Alexander Zinoviev, along with Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov, was one of the three great intellectual giants who became dissidents during the late Soviet period.

This remarkable and prophetic interview was originally published in 1999 in the French Figaro Magazine. Its original title was: ”The West and Russia – A Controlled Catastrophe”

Q. With what feelings are you returning home after such a long exile?

A. With a feeling that I once left a strong, respected, even awe-inspiring power. Returning now, I found a defeated country in ruins. Unlike others, I would never have left the USSR if I had had a choice. Emigration was a real punishment for me.

Q. Nevertheless, you were welcomed with open arms here! (in Germany – Ed. Note)

A. That is true… But despite the triumphant recognition and the worldwide success of my books, I have always felt like a stranger here.

Q. After the collapse of communism the Western system has become the main focus of your research. Why?

A. Because what happened was what I had predicted: the fall of communism turned into the breakup of Russia.

Q. So the fight with communism was a conspiracy to destroy Russia?

A. Precisely. I say this because once I was an unwitting accomplice of this action that I found shameful. The West wanted and programmed the Russian catastrophe. I read documents and participated in the research, which under the guise of ideological struggle worked towards the destruction of Russia. This became so unbearable for me that I could no longer stay in the camp of those who destroy my people and my country. The West is not a stranger to me, but I consider it an enemy empire.

Q: Have you become a patriot?

A: Patriotism does not concern me. I received an international upbringing and I remain loyal to it. I cannot even say whether I love Russians and Russia or not. I am part of them. Today’s suffering of my people is so horrible that I cannot stand watching them from afar. The barbarity of globalization manifests itself in many diverse, unacceptable ways.

Q: Nevertheless, many former Soviet dissidents speak about their former homeland as a country of human rights and democracy. Now that this point of view has become commonly accepted in the West, you are trying to refute it. Isn’t there a contradiction here?

A: During the Cold War, democracy was a weapon in the fight against communist totalitarianism. Today we understand that the Cold War era was the history of the West’s apogee. During that time the West had it all: unprecedented growth of wealth, true freedom, incredible social progress, colossal scientific and technological achievements. But at the same time the West was imperceptibly changing. The timid integration of developed countries launched at that time has developed into the internationalization of the economy and the globalization of power that we are witnessing now. Integration may help the growth of common good and have a positive impact if it is driven by the legitimate aspiration of fraternal people to unite, for example. But the integration in question was conceived from the beginning as a vertical structure strictly controlled by a supranational power. Without a successful Russian counter-revolution against the Soviet Union, the West could not have started the process of globalization.

Q: So, the role of Gorbachev was not positive?

A: I look at things from a slightly different angle. Contrary to common belief, Soviet communism did not collapse because of internal reasons. Its collapse is certainly the greatest victory in the history of the West. An unheard of victory which, let me say it again, can establish a unitary power monopoly on a planetary scale. The end of communism also signalized the end of democracy. The modern epoch is not only post-communist, it is also post-democratic! Today we are witnessing the establishment of democratic totalitarianism, or, if you will, totalitarian democracy.

Q: Does not it all sound a little absurd?

A: Not at all. Democracy requires pluralism and pluralism implies an existence of at least two more or less equal forces which oppose each other and at the same time influence each other. During the Cold War there was world democracy, global pluralism, with two opposing systems: capitalist and communist, plus other countries with an amorphous system which belonged to neither. Soviet totalitarianism was sensitive to Western criticism. In turn, the Soviet Union influenced the West, in particular through the latter’s own communist parties. Today we live in a world dominated by one single force, one ideology and one pro-globalization party. All of this together began to take shape during the Cold War, when superstructures gradually appeared in various forms: commercial, banking, political and media organizations. Despite their different fields of activity, what they had in common was essentially their transnational scope. With the collapse of communism they began to rule the world. Thus, Western countries ended up in the dominant position, but at the same time they are now in a subordinate position as they gradually lose their sovereignty to what I call the supra-society. The planet-wide supra-society consists of commercial and non-commercial organizations whose influence extends far beyond individual states. Like other countries, the Western countries are subordinated to these supranational structures. This is despite the fact that the sovereignty of states was also an integral part of pluralism and hence of democracy on a global scale. Today’s ruling supra-power suppresses sovereign states. The European integration unfolding in front of our very eyes is also leading to the disappearance of pluralism within this new conglomerate in favor of supranational power.

Q: But do not you think that France and Germany remain democracies?

A: Western countries got to know true democracy during the Cold War. Political parties had genuine ideological differences and different political programs. The media also differed from each other. All this had an impact on the lives of ordinary people contributing to the growth of their wealth. Now this has come to an end. A democratic and prosperous capitalism with socially oriented laws and job security was in many ways thanks to a fear of communism. After the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, a massive attack on the social rights of citizens was launched in the West. Today the socialists who are in power in most European countries are pursuing policies of dismantling the social security system, destroying everything that was socialist in the capitalist countries. There is no longer a political force in the West capable of protecting ordinary citizens. The existence of political parties is a mere formality. They will differ less and less as time goes on. The war in the Balkans was anything but democratic. Nevertheless, the war was perpetrated by the socialists who historically have been against these kinds of ventures. Environmentalists, who are in power in some countries, welcomed the environmental catastrophe caused by the NATO bombings. They even dared to claim that bombs containing depleted uranium are not dangerous for the environment, even though soldiers loading them wear special protective overalls. Thus, democracy is gradually disappearing from the social structure of the West. Totalitarianism is spreading everywhere because the supranational structure imposes its laws on individual states. This undemocratic superstructure gives orders, imposes sanctions, organizes embargos, drops bombs, causes hunger. Even Clinton obeys it. Financial totalitarianism has subjugated political power. Emotions and compassion are alien to cold financial totalitarianism. Compared with financial dictatorship, political dictatorship is humane. Resistance was possible inside the most brutal dictatorships. Rebellion against banks is impossible.

Q: What about a revolution?

A: Democratic totalitarianism and financial dictatorship rule out the possibility of social revolution.

Q: Why?

A: Because they combine omnipotent military power with a financial stranglehold. All revolutions received support from outside. From now on this is impossible because there are no sovereign states, nor will there be. Moreover, at the lowest level the working class has been replaced with the unemployed class. What do the unemployed want? Jobs. Therefore, they are in a less advantageous position than the working class of the past.

Q: All totalitarian systems had their own ideology. What is the ideology of the new society you call post-democratic?

A: The most influential Western thinkers and politicians believe that we have entered the post-ideological epoch. This is because by “ideology” they mean communism, fascism, nazism, etc. In reality, the ideology, the super-ideology of the Western world, developed over the last fifty years is much stronger than communism or national socialism. A western citizen is being brainwashed much more than a soviet citizen ever was during the era of communist propaganda. In ideology, the main thing is not the ideas, but rather the mechanisms of their distribution. The might of the Western media, for example, is incomparably greater than that of the propaganda mechanisms of the Vatican when it was at the zenith of its power. And it is not only the cinema, literature, philosophy – all the levers of influence and mechanisms used in the promulgation of culture, in its broadest sense, work in this direction. At the slightest impulse all who work in this area respond with such consistency that it is hard not to think that all orders come from a single source of power. It was enough to decide to stigmatize General Karadžić or President Milošević or someone else for the whole planetary propaganda machine to start working against them. As a result, instead of condemning politicians and NATO generals for violation of all existing laws, the vast majority of Western citizens is convinced that the war against Serbia was necessary and just. Western ideology combines and mixes ideas based on its needs. One of these ideas is that Western values and lifestyle are the best in the world! Although for most people on the planet these values have disastrous consequences. Try to convince Americans that these values will destroy Russia. You will not be able to. They will continue to assert the thesis of universalism of Western values, therefore following one of the fundamental principles of ideological dogmatism. Theorists, politicians and media of the West are absolutely sure that their system is the best. That is why they impose it around the world without a doubt and with a clear conscience. Western man as the carrier of these highest values is therefore a new superman. The term itself is a taboo, but It all comes down to this. This phenomenon should be studied scientifically. But I dare to say that it has become extremely difficult to conduct scientific research in some areas of sociology and history. The scientist who desires to research mechanisms of democratic totalitarianism will face extreme difficulties. He will be made into an outcast. On the other hand, those whose research serves the dominant ideology are flooded with grants while publishing houses and media are fighting for the right to work with such authors. I have personally experienced it when I have been teaching and working as a researcher at foreign universities.

Q: Does not this super-ideology you dislike, have ideas of tolerance and respect for others?

A: When you listen to representatives of the Western elite, everything seems so pure, generous and respectful to people. Doing so they use the classic rule of propaganda: hide the reality behind sweet talk. However it is enough to turn on the TV, go to the movies, open a bestselling book or listen to popular music to realize the opposite: the unprecedented dissemination of the cult of violence, sex and money. Noble speeches are designed to hide these three (and there are more) pillars of totalitarian democracy.

Q: What about human rights? Is it not the West who honors them the most?

A: From now on the idea of human rights is increasingly under pressure. Even the purely ideological thesis that these rights are intrinsic and inseparable today will not sustain even the first stage of a thorough analysis. I am ready to subject Western ideology to the same scientific analysis that I did with communism. But this is a long conversation, not for today’s interview.

Q: Does Western ideology have a key idea?

A: The idea of globalization! In other words, world domination! Since this idea is rather unpleasant, it is hidden under lengthy phrases about planetary unity, transformation of the world into one integrated whole… In reality, the West has now commenced work on structural changes across the whole planet. On the one hand Western society dominates the world, on the other hand it itself is being rebuilt vertically with the supranational power on the very top of the pyramid.

Q: World government?

A: Yes, if you will.

Q: To believe in it, doesn’t that mean to be a victim of delusional fantasies about global conspiracy?

A: What conspiracy? There is no conspiracy. The world government is controlled by the heads of well known supranational economic, financial and political structures. According to my estimates, this super-society, now ruling the world, has about fifty million people. Its center is the United States. The countries of Western Europe and some former Asian “dragon” countries are its basis. Other countries are dominated under a tight financial and economic ranking. This is the reality. Regarding propaganda, it presumes that the creation of world government under control of the world parliament is desirable because the world is a big brotherhood. All these are just stories designed for the plebs.

Q: The European Parliament as well?

A: No, because the European Parliament exists. But it is naive to believe that the European Union was a result of the good will of the governments of the member states. The European Union is a weapon for the destruction of national sovereignties. It is part of the projects developed by supranational organisms.

Q: The European commonwealth changed its name after the collapse of the Soviet Union. As if to replace the Soviet Union, it was called the “European Union”. After all, it could be called differently. Like bolsheviks, European leaders call themselves commissioners. LIke bolsheviks they head commissions. The last president was “elected” being the only candidate …

A: We must not forget that the process of social organization is subject to certain rules. To organize a million people is one thing, to organize ten million is another, to organize a hundred million is a very hard task. To organize five hundred million people is a task of colossal proportions. It is necessary to create new administrative bodies, to train people who will manage them and to ensure their smooth functioning. This is the primary task. In fact, the Soviet Union is a classic example of a multinational conglomerate led by a supranational management structure. The European Union wants to achieve better results than the Soviet Union! That is justified. Even twenty years ago I was stunned by the fact that so-called flaws of the Soviet system were even more developed in the West.

Q: Like what?

A: Planning! The Western economy is infinitely more planned than the economy of the USSR was ever planned. Bureaucracy! In the Soviet Union 10 to 12% of the active population worked in the country‘s management and administration field. In the US this number is 16 to 20%. However the USSR was criticized for its planned economy and the burden of bureaucratic apparatus. Two thousand people worked in the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The Communist Party apparatus reached 150 thousand workers. Today in the West you will find dozens, even hundreds of enterprises in industrial and banking sectors employing more people. The bureaucratic apparatus of the Soviet Communist Party was negligibly small compared with the staff of large transnational corporations of the West. In fact, we must recognize that the USSR was mismanaged because of the lack of administrative staff. It was necessary to have two to three times more administrative workers! The European Union is well aware of these problems and therefore takes them into account. Integration is impossible without an impressive administrative apparatus.

Q: What you say is contradictory to the ideas of liberalism promoted by European leaders. Do you not think that their liberalism is just a show?

A: The administration has a tendency to grow greatly which is dangerous in itself. It knows that. Like any organism it finds antidotes to continue its normal functioning. A private initiative is one of them. Another antidote is social and individual morality. Applying them, power fights self-destructive tendencies. So it invented liberalism to create a counterweight to its own gravity. Today, however, it is absurd to be a liberal. The liberal society no longer exists. The liberal doctrine does not reflect the realities of the unprecedented era of concentration of capital. The movement of huge financial resources does not take into accounts the interests of individual states and peoples consisting of individuals. Liberalism implies a personal initiative and taking of financial risks. Today any business needs money provided by banks. These banks, whose numbers are diminishing, implement a policy which is by its nature dictatorial and manipulative. Business owners are at their mercy because everything is subject to lending and therefore is under the control of financial institutions. The importance of the individual – the basis of liberalism – is reduced day by day. Today it does not matter who heads this or that company, this or that country: Bush or Clinton, Kohl or Schröder, Chirac or Jospin, what is the difference?

Q: The totalitarian regimes of the 20th century were extremely cruel, which cannot be said about Western democracy.

A: It’s not the means that are important, but the end result obtained. Would you like an example? In the struggle against Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union lost 20 million people (according to the latest figures of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation – 27 million. – Ed. Note) and suffered tremendous destruction. During the Cold War, a war without bombs and guns, there were a lot more losses any way you look at it! Over the last decade the life expectancy of Russians dropped by ten years! The death rate is much higher than the birth rate. Two million children do not sleep at home. Five million school-age children do not attend school. There are 12 million registered drug addicts. Alcoholism has become universal. 70% of young people are not suitable for military service due to various physical defects. These are the direct consequences of the defeat in the Cold War, followed by a transition to a Western lifestyle. If this continues, the population will drop rapidly at first from 150 million to 100 million, and then to 50 million. Democratic totalitarianism will surpass all previous totalitarian regimes.

Q: Through violence?

A: Drugs, poor nutrition, and AIDS are much more effective than military violence. Although after the immense force of destruction of the Cold War, the West invented a “humanitarian war”. The military campaigns in Iraq and Yugoslavia are two examples of collective punishment and retaliation on an exceedingly large scale, while the propaganda machine shapes them as a “good cause” or a “humanitarian war”. Turning the victims of violence against themselves is another, different approach. An example of its use is the Russian counter-revolution of 1985. However, when they unleashed the war in Yugoslavia, the countries of Western Europe led war against themselves.

Q. In your opinion, the war against Serbia was also a war against Europe?

A. Absolutely right. In Europe there are forces that can compel it to act against itself. Serbia was chosen because it resisted the ever-expanding globalization. Russia could be next on the list. Before China…

Q: In spite of its nuclear arsenal?

A: Russia’s nuclear arsenal is huge, but it is outdated. Besides, the Russians are morally disarmed and ready to surrender… I believe that the monstrosity of the 21st century will surpass everything that mankind has seen to this day. Just think about the coming global war on Chinese communism. To defeat such a populous country one will need not exterminate around 500 million people, not 10 or 20 million. Today, given the level of excellence of the propaganda machine, it is quite possible. Naturally, in will be done in the name of freedom and human rights. Unless, of course, some PR organization invents a new and no less noble a cause.

Q: Don’t you think that people can have their own opinions, and that they can vote and thus express themselves?

ANSWER. First of all, even now people don’t vote that often, and they will vote even less in the future. With regard to public opinion in the West it is shaped by the media. Suffice it to recall the universal approval of the war in Kosovo. Remember the Spanish war! Volunteers from all over the world traveled to that country to fight on one side or the other. Remember the war in Vietnam. But these days, people are so well shepherded that they react only the way that the purveyors of propaganda want them to.

Q: The Soviet Union and Yugoslavia were the most multi-ethnic countries in the world, but they were destroyed nevertheless. Do you see a connection between the destruction of multiethnic countries, on the one hand, and the promotion of multi-ethnicity on the other hand?

A: Soviet totalitarianism created a genuinely multi-cultural and multi-ethnic society. It was the Western democracies that made superhuman efforts to fan the flames of various kinds of nationalism, because they considered the breakup of the Soviet Union as the best way to destroy it. The same mechanism worked in Yugoslavia. Germany had always sought the obliteration of Yugoslavia. United, Yugoslavia could strengthen its resistance. The essence of the Western system is to divide in order to make it easier for the West to impose its laws on all parties, and then act as Chief Justice. There is no reason to assume that this know-how will not be applied in relation to the dismemberment of China in the future.

Q: India and China voiced their opposition to the bombing of Yugoslavia. If needed, could they form a core of resistance? After all, 2 billion people are no joke!

A: The means of those countries cannot in any way be compared with the military might and technological superiority of the West.

Q: Were you impressed by the effectiveness of the US military arsenal in Yugoslavia?

A: Not only that. If such a decision had been made, then Serbia would have ceased to exist within a few hours. Apparently, the leaders of the new world order have chosen a strategy of permanent violence. Numerous localized conflicts will now keep igniting one after another so that the “humanitarian war” machine, which we have already seen in action, could keep extinguishing them. In fact, this is likely to become the solution to extending control over the entire planet. The West controls most of the Earth’s natural resources. Its intellectual resources are millions of times greater than the resources of the rest of the world. This is the foundation of the overwhelming hegemony of the West in technology, the arts, media, IT, and science, and this implies its superiority in all other areas. It would be too easy to just conquer the world. After all, they still need to rule! And this is the fundamental problem that the Americans are trying to address now… Remember that in the time of Christ, the population of earth was only about 100 million people. Today, Nigeria alone has that number of inhabitants! A billion “westernoids” and the people assimilated by them will rule the entire world. However, this billion, in turn, also needs to be controlled. In all probability, two hundred million people will be required to control the Western world. But they must be chosen and taught. That’s why China is doomed to failure in its struggle against the hegemony of the West. The country does not have enough control, nor economic and intellectual resources to implement an effective administrative system consisting of approximately 300 million people. Only the West is able to solve the problems of global governance. It has already started to do so. Hundreds of thousands of “westernoids” in the former communist countries, such as Russia, tend to occupy leadership positions there. Totalitarian democracy will also be a colonial democracy.

Q: According to Marx, apart from violence and cruelty, colonization also brought with it the blessings of civilization. Perhaps the history of mankind is simply repeating itself at this new stage?

A: Indeed, why not? But, alas, not for everyone. What kind of contribution to civilization has been made by American Indians? Almost none, as they were crushed, destroyed, and wiped off the face of the Earth. Now look at the contribution of the Russians! Let me make an important point here: the West did not fear Soviet military power as much as its intellectual, artistic, and athletic potential. The West saw that the Soviet Union was full of life! This is the most important thing that must be destroyed, should one wish to destroy one’s enemy. Which is precisely what was done. Today, Russian science is dependent on US funding. It is in a pitiful state because the US is not interested in financing its competition. Americans prefer to offer Russian scientists jobs in the United States. Soviet cinema, too, has been destroyed and replaced by American movies. The same thing happened to literature. World domination manifests itself primarily as an intellectual, or, if you prefer, a cultural diktat. Which is why in the last few decades, Americans have so zealously tried to bring down the cultural and intellectual common denominator of the entire world to their own level – it will allow them to impose this diktat.

Q: But might this domination turn out to be a blessing for all mankind?

A. Ten generations from now, people will, indeed, be able to say that it all happened in the name of humanity, i.e. for their greater good. But what about the Russians or the French who are alive today? Should they be happy that their people will have the same future as the American Indians? The term “humanity” is an abstraction. In reality, there are Russian, French, Serbs, etc. However, if the current trend continues, then the nations who founded modern civilization (I mean the Latin peoples), will gradually disappear. Western Europe is already bursting with foreigners. We have yet to speak about it, but this phenomenon is not accidental, and it is certainly not the consequence of the allegedly uncontrollable human migration flows. The goal for Europe is to create a situation similar to the situation in the United States. I suspect that the French will hardly be delighted to learn that mankind will come to be happy, but only without the French. After all, it might well be a rational project to only leave a limited number of people in the world, who could then live in a paradise on earth. Those remaining people would certainly believe that their happiness is the result of historical development… No. All that matters is the life that we and our loved ones are living today.

Q: The Soviet system was ineffective. Are all totalitarian societies doomed to inefficiency?

A: What is efficiency? The US spends more money on weight loss than Russia spends on its entire public budget. Still, the number of overweight people is growing. And such examples are many.

Q: Would it be correct to say that the intensifying radicalization in the West will leads to its own destruction?

A: Nazism was destroyed during total war. The Soviet system was young and strong. It would have continued to thrive, had it not been destroyed by outside forces. Social systems do not destroy themselves. They can only be destroyed by an external force. It’s like a ball rolling on a surface: only the presence of an external obstacle could break its movement. I can prove it like a theorem. Today, we are dominated by a country with enormous economic and military superiority. The new emerging world order is drawn to unipolarity. If the supranational government manages to achieve this by eliminating all external enemies, then a unified social system can survive until the end of time. Only a person can die from their illness. But a group of people, even a small group, would try to survive through reproduction. Now imagine a social system comprising billions of people! Its capacity to anticipate and prevent self-destructive phenomena will be limitless. In the foreseeable future, the process of erasing differences across the world cannot be stopped, since democratic totalitarianism is the last phase of the development of Western society, which began with the Renaissance.

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#JUST FOR BOOKS #Alexander Zinoviev

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